tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22123031931125085082018-03-06T01:49:01.271-08:00Hunter StuartHunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-16142557733358011842017-12-28T22:42:00.000-08:002018-03-04T05:26:39.160-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XgyUoPpNsYs/WjxmmY4KJAI/AAAAAAAACIk/avEzLWFEmHAm6XXE9X5C5WWzHvkXVDcOACLcBGAs/s1600/Hunter%2BStuart%2Bheadshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XgyUoPpNsYs/WjxmmY4KJAI/AAAAAAAACIk/avEzLWFEmHAm6XXE9X5C5WWzHvkXVDcOACLcBGAs/s400/Hunter%2BStuart%2Bheadshot.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>photo: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost&nbsp;</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>I'm&nbsp;a 34-year-old writer</b> in Chicago, working as a senior editor at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Dose/">Dose</a>, a digital media publisher and agency.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I have nine years of experience as an editor, journalist and video producer. I recently spent 1.5 years working as a reporter in Jerusalem, where I covered conflict, culture and technology for Vice, Al Jazeera English and others.</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: medium;">From 2010-2015, I was a staff editor at HuffPost in New York City, where I worked in a number of different roles, including as a business reporter, a video producer and a social media editor.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: x-small;">My reporting has also been published in, or reported by, news outlets including CNN, MSNBC, BuzzFeed and Time. Please see below for samples of my work.&nbsp;</span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><br />Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-84098345503138627212017-12-28T22:37:00.000-08:002018-02-25T08:37:44.078-08:00<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Examples Of My Writing</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b>Dose &amp; OMGFacts</b></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Feb. 2018 - <a href="https://omgfacts.com/one-of-the-convicts-who-escaped-alcatraz-in-1962-may-have-surfaced-a2e573882828">One Of The Convicts Who Escaped Alcatraz In 1962 May Have Surfaced</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Dec. 2017 - <a href="https://dose.com/articles/this-grieving-dog-was-inconsolable-then-a-new-puppy-arrived/">This Grieving Dog Was Inconsolable. Then A New Puppy Arrived</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Nov. 2017 - <a href="https://omgfacts.com/nixon-the-cia-the-plane-crash-no-one-can-explain-42eb2d8c725">Nixon, The CIA &amp; The Plane Crash No One Can Explain</a>&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Apr. 2017 - <a href="https://dose.com/people-still-think-the-holocaust-was-a-hoax-78fbb8521251">People Still Think The Holocaust Was A Hoax</a>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Apr. 2017 - <a href="https://dose.com/this-hands-free-app-will-change-the-lives-of-people-with-disabilities-f777a90d2f8d">This Hands-Free App Will Change The Lives Of People With Disabilities</a>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Mar. 2017 - <a href="https://dose.com/lab-grown-meat-will-save-the-earth-49fd50adeb17">Lab-Grown Meat Will Save The Planet</a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Feb. 2017 - <a href="https://dose.com/what-is-breitbart-6c1662bb8ed2">What Is Breitbart, The Far-Right Site That Helped Elect Trump?</a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Jan. 2017 - <a href="https://dose.com/is-islam-inherently-violent-ef024af460c9">Is Islam Inherently Violent?</a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b>From The Middle East - Selected Clips</b></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Feb. 2017 - The Jerusalem Report magazine: <a href="http://www.hunterstuartjournalist.com/2017/02/a-view-from-frontlines.html">A View From The Front Lines: How Living In Israel Changed My View Of The Conflict</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Nov. 2016 - Al Jazeera English: <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/meet-gaza-female-geeks-161008133544403.html">Meet Gaza's Female Geeks</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Oct. 2016 -&nbsp;The Jerusalem Report&nbsp;magazine: <a href="http://www.hunterstuartjournalist.com/2016/10/casting-their-ballot-for-trump.html">Casting Their Ballot For Trump - Why Israelis Are Voting For The Donald</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Sept. 2016 - Al Bawaba News: <a href="https://www.albawaba.com/news/far-their-bullets-can-reach-israel-palestine-descends-fresh-wave-violence-885906">'As Far As Their Bullets Can Reach' - Israel/Palestine Descends Into Fresh Wave Of Violence</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Sept. 2016 - Vice/Motherboard: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkjejd/gaze-startups-blockade">Accelerating Startups Under Blockade In The 'Gaza Challenge'</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Sept. 2016 - Al Bawaba News: <a href="https://www.albawaba.com/news/oromo-journalist-describes-harrowing-flight-ethiopia-880536">Oromo Journalist Describes Harrowing Flight From Ethiopia</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Sept. 2016 - Al Jazeera English: <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/palestinians-paying-thousands-bribes-leave-gaza-160804084846207.html">Palestinians Paying Thousands In Bribes To Leave Gaza</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Aug. 2016 - Al Bawaba News: <a href="http://www.albawaba.com/news/smuggled-vodka-bribery-and-beautiful-mountains-americans-traveling-afghanistan-tell-their-stori">Smuggled Vodka, Bribery and Beautiful Mountains: Americans Traveling to Afghanistan Tell Their Stories</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Aug. 2016 - Al Bawaba News: <a href="https://www.albawaba.com/news/30-years-conflict-us-has-killed-least-1323703-muslims-869790">In 30 Years Of Conflict, The U.S. Has Killed At Least 435,000 Muslims</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">July 2016 - Plus61J:&nbsp;<a href="http://plus61j.net.au/plus61j-articles/combatants-for-peace/">How Former Israeli And Palestinian Fighters Adopt Non-Violence</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">July 2016 - The Jerusalem Report magazine: <a href="http://www.hunterstuartjournalist.com/2016/07/avocado-diplomacy-visit-to-israeli-run.html">A Visit To An Israeli-Run Agricultural Farm Show's Jerusalem's Push Into Africa</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">June 2016 - The Jerusalem Report magazine: <a href="http://www.hunterstuartjournalist.com/2016/06/anarchy-in-jewish-state-hunter-stuart.html">Anarchy In The Jewish State - Meet The Supporters Of The 'No-State Solution</a>'</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">May 2016 - The Times Of Israel: <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the-binary-options-industry-parties-in-cyprus/">As Victims Pile Up, The Binary Options Industry Parties In Cyprus</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">May 2016 - Middle East Eye:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/jordanian-site-turns-sarcasm-and-satire-combat-heavy-news-1364185969">Jordanian Website Turns To Satire To Combat Heavy News</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">May 2016 - International Business Times:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/inside-al-zarqa-will-isis-ambush-jordans-waiting-generation-1560337">Will ISIS Ambush Jordan's Waiting Generation?</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">March 2016 - Plus61J: <a href="http://plus61j.net.au/plus61j-articles/cross-border-preparation-for-peaceful-coexistence/">Cross-Border Preparation For A Peaceful Coexistence</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">March 2016 - Vice/Motherboard: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bmvj88/botnets-plague-the-web-this-ai-is-out-to-stop-them">Botnets Plague The Web. This A.I. Is Out To Stop Them</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Feb. 2016 - Vice/Motherboard: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7yvay/the-future-of-cybersecurity-is-being-written-in-the-israeli-desert">The Future Of Cybersecurity Is Being Written In The Israeli Desert</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Jan. 2016 - Pacific Standard: <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-hard-lives-of-non-believers-in-the-middle-east">The Hard Lives Of Non-Believers In The Middle East</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Jan. 2016 - The Jerusalem Report magazine: <a href="http://www.hunterstuartjournalist.com/2016/01/treasure-house-of-jewish-culture.html">Israel's National Library Is Changing Its Definition Of Jewishness</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Dec. 2015 - Al Bawaba News: <a href="https://www.albawaba.com/news/knife-intifada-east-jerusalem-daily-frustrations-push-normal-people-over-edge-781764">Knife Intifada, East Jerusalem Side: Daily Frustrations Push People Over The Edge</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Dec. 2015 - Al Bawaba News:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.albawaba.com/news/muslims-massacres-and-media-san-bernadino-raises-uncomfortable-questions-777072">Muslims, Massacres &amp; The Media: San Bernardino Raises Uncomfortable Questions</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Dec. 2015 - Vice/Motherboard: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg7ava/how-3g-will-change-palestine">How 3G Will Change Palestine</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Oct. 2015 - Vice News: <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/olive-picking-in-the-west-bank-with-the-israelis-protecting-palestinian-farmers">In The Field With The Israeli Rabbis Protecting Palestinian Olive Farmers</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Oct. 2015 - The Source magazine: <a href="https://www.thesourcemagazine.org/healing-the-wounds-of-conflict-through-water-diplomacy/">Healing The Wounds Of Conflict Through Water Diplomacy</a></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b>HuffPost - Selected Clips&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/police-body-cameras_n_6933474.html">Cop Cams Will Change Policing. But Maybe Not The Way You Think</a> (Mar. 2015)</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/02/credit-report-mistakes-never-get-fixed-bureau-disputes_n_6579820.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517093000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGiT_Irx5abzW25Eo7mFmfZ57DTLw" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/02/credit-report-mistakes-never-get-fixed-bureau-disputes_n_6579820.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Lots Of Credit Reports Have Mistakes, But Good Luck Getting Yours Fixed</a>&nbsp;(Feb. 2015)</span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/12/payday-lenders_n_6443134.html?utm_hp_ref%3Dtw&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517093000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGpavu9VIGShaZxuSr6KMJhmQBlZw" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/12/payday-lenders_n_6443134.html?utm_hp_ref=tw" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Payday Lenders Use The Internet To Evade State Law</a>&nbsp;(Jan. 2015)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/12/outsourcing-torture_n_6317236.html?1418752015%26ncid%3Dtweetlnkushpmg00000067&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517093000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG6IT9TitJ2BOccJjBBvdvz1qdHRg" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/12/outsourcing-torture_n_6317236.html?1418752015&amp;ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">How We Outsourced CIA Torture, And Why It Matters</a>&nbsp;(Dec. 2014)</span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/24/police-gun-tracking_n_6040930.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517093000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFyEC7_hs_ELuF7hFTPI5BZXDmVcQ" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/24/police-gun-tracking_n_6040930.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Company Makes Gun Tech That Could Help Prevent Police Brutality</a>&nbsp;(Oct. 2014)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/title-washing_n_5767494.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517093000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHhdHc0za-5CkNlPEvt8CTJtFp7wQ" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/title-washing_n_5767494.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">1 Million Used Cars Are Hiding A Terrible Secret</a>&nbsp;(Sept. 2014)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/safer-guns_n_5570670.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517094000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEsaT0svD4asM3_ulf5qDh7QARtHA" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/safer-guns_n_5570670.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">The Gun Lobby And A Dumb Law Are Keeping Us From Safer Guns</a>&nbsp;(Jul. 2014)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://u.s.%2520companies%2520less%2520lgbt-friendly%2520than%2520they%2527d%2520like%2520you%2520to%2520believe/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517093000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHUhjrr477rB9VB-_Pa2NzlU81QBw" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/27/lgbt-employees-equality-discrimination-protection-at-work_n_5526746.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">U.S. Companies Less LGBT-Friendly Than They'd Like You To Believe</a>&nbsp;(Jun. 2014)</span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/weed-delivery-nyc-marijuana-brooklyn_n_4906701.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517093000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF0Sb9R15u8PZOilSTV--n_jPclbw" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/weed-delivery-nyc-marijuana-brooklyn_n_4906701.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">I Spent A Day Delivering Weed In New York City</a>&nbsp;(Mar. 2014)</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><b>Selected Columns - Miscellaneous</b></span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><a href="http://thegreenamerican.tumblr.com/post/142301581345/return-from-exile">Return From Exile: How Israel Locked Me Out For Six Crazy Weeks</a> (Apr. 2016: The Green American)</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=https://medium.com/@HunterS/what-i-learned-from-my-christmas-edibles-nightmare-4b21f61ffc05%23.4k5wwmny5&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517094000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFDMj37jpE6Gzgqyk0Uf4FgqKLwEw" href="https://medium.com/@HunterS/what-i-learned-from-my-christmas-edibles-nightmare-4b21f61ffc05#.4k5wwmny5" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">What I Learned From My Christmas Edibles Nightmare</a>&nbsp;(Jan. 7, 2015: Medium)</span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/abolish-tipping_n_5991796.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517094000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFNRI3OUE0ev68Em84rlq48o7rhLg" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/abolish-tipping_n_5991796.html" target="_blank">Why We Should Abolish Tipping, Once And For All</a>&nbsp;(Oct. 17, 2014: HuffPost)</span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hunter-stuart/a-message-from-a-man-to-men_b_5715733.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1463639517094000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF1mZoxmR3QmA-sFYLgEM3D0WZBWA" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hunter-stuart/a-message-from-a-man-to-men_b_5715733.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">A Message From A Man To Men About Wedding Planning</a>&nbsp;(Sept. 11, 2014: HuffPost)</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BUruPfpM7oU/Wkf1xjq7VnI/AAAAAAAACKY/135ALKM7bBYULlnrL0hfYVbQ3TNnM-aTACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-30%2Bat%2B2.23.17%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="598" data-original-width="596" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BUruPfpM7oU/Wkf1xjq7VnI/AAAAAAAACKY/135ALKM7bBYULlnrL0hfYVbQ3TNnM-aTACLcBGAs/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-30%2Bat%2B2.23.17%2BPM.png" width="396" /></a></div><br /></div></div><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-40251033813301507752017-12-21T18:39:00.000-08:002018-01-02T14:23:41.751-08:00<h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"></h1><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: georgia, century, times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">My Video Work</span></i></h1><div><i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></i></div><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: georgia, century, times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oC-02AD0iKM/VMUXAY3m3wI/AAAAAAAAA68/bMPf2SE0rvM/s1600/HUNTER_05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oC-02AD0iKM/VMUXAY3m3wI/AAAAAAAAA68/bMPf2SE0rvM/s400/HUNTER_05.jpg" width="264" /></a></div><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;times&quot;; font-size: x-small; font-weight: 400;">(Photo by&nbsp;</span><a href="http://blakeogdenphotography.com/" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-weight: 400;">Blake Ogden</a><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;times&quot;; font-size: x-small; font-weight: 400;">)</span></i></span></h1><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></h1><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Morning Dose TV</span></h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f7hBdp7G83Q/Wjxv40ZcC1I/AAAAAAAACI4/bsLNPKWNt5AUTFqKiPYAywmKgMTGx6KUwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-21%2Bat%2B8.37.04%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="1020" height="121" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f7hBdp7G83Q/Wjxv40ZcC1I/AAAAAAAACI4/bsLNPKWNt5AUTFqKiPYAywmKgMTGx6KUwCLcBGAs/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-21%2Bat%2B8.37.04%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.7); font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.7); font-size: 15px;">My team and I co-produce <a href="https://www.facebook.com/morningdosetv">a social-media-driven TV news show</a>, which airs live every morning in six U.S. cities and on Facebook Live.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7); font-size: 15px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7); font-size: 15px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.7); font-size: 15px;">My team and I surface stories through a variety of social-listening tools, and test those stories on social media to gauge performance. Only the best make it on the show.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.7); font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.7); font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.7); font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.7); font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: georgia, century, times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dose Media &amp; OMGFacts</span></h1></div><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: georgia, century, times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">•&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/OMGFacts/videos/vb.231435026494/10156016435201495/?type=2&amp;theater">The Racist Origins Of The Word 'Marijuana'</a></span></span></h1></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">• <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Dose/videos/1549723005122232/">This 21-Year-Old With Down Syndrome Sold $750,000 Worth Of Socks</a></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">•&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/morningdosetv/videos/497144250685537/">This Dreidel Tournament Puts A New Spin On An Old Jewish Tradition</a></span><br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="https://dose.com/articles/he-once-helped-people-join-the-kkk-now-he-helps-them-escape/">He Once Helped People Join The KKK. Now He Helps Them Escape</a>&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></h1><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">HuffPost, TIME and Others</span></h1><div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUyk8o3RhzI/Wkf48mvbrYI/AAAAAAAACLA/v4xcYXrjoXcY64m-U3P8OC2HXx0CT6bKQCLcBGAs/s1600/Me%2Bwith%2BArianna%2Bhuffington%2Brally%2Bto%2Brestore%2Bsanity%2B2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="650" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUyk8o3RhzI/Wkf48mvbrYI/AAAAAAAACLA/v4xcYXrjoXcY64m-U3P8OC2HXx0CT6bKQCLcBGAs/s400/Me%2Bwith%2BArianna%2Bhuffington%2Brally%2Bto%2Brestore%2Bsanity%2B2010.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(photo: Getty Images/Michael Loccisano)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/hurricane-sandy-two-weeks_n_2132540.html">Hurricane Sandy Video: Rockaways Residents Tell Their Stories After The Storm</a>&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">(HuffPo, 2012. Camera, editing, writing)</span></span></h1><div>•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/new-hampshire-primary-election-2012-undecided_n_1196016.html">The Undecided Voter</a>&nbsp;(HuffPo, 2012.&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">Camera, editing, writing</span><span style="font-size: small;">)</span><br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="http://content.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,712319583001_2040772,00.html">Skipping The Middleman, Straight To The Lobsterman</a>&nbsp;(TIME, 2012. Camera, writing, editing)<br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJXRVA16Kig">Taxpayer-Funded 'Crisis Pregnancy Centers' Proselytize And Spread Misinformation: A Special Report</a> (2011, RH Reality Check. Camera, voice)<br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2009/09/24/forty-days-protesting-birth-control-this-prolife/">Protesting Birth Control&nbsp;In Rural Wisconsin</a>&nbsp;(2010, RH Reality Check. Camera, writing)<br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDC3jIB2-hM">Mother's Day At An Abortion Clinic</a> (2010, Stuart TV Productions. Camera, editing)<br /><div class="p1"><br />•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/9-wildest-things-fox-mashup_n_2365592.html">The Nine Wildest Things Fox News Said In 2012</a>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">(HuffPost, 2012</span>)<br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/obama-gun-control_n_2322797.html">Obama On Gun Control: 5 Years Of Sweet Nothings</a>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">(HuffPost, 2012</span>)</div><div class="p1"><br />•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/romneys-awkward-bonding-tour-of-america_n_1438513.html">Mitt Romney's Awkward Bonding Tour Of America</a>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">(HuffPost, 2012</span>)<br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/paul-ryan-poverty_n_2019092.html">Paul Ryan Looks At Poverty, Sees Undignified Takers</a>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">(HuffPost, 2012</span>)</div><br />•&nbsp;<a href="https://www.blogger.com/meh%20romney%20http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/mitt-romney-super-tuesday-2012_n_1300130.html">Meh Romney: How No One Really Seems To Like Mitt</a>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">(HuffPost, 2012</span>)<br /><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/politicians-and-rap-music_n_1711924.html">25 Years Of Politicians Making Awkward Rap References</a>&nbsp;(HuffPost, 2012</span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">)</span></h1>•&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/politicians-talking-about-pot_n_2094961.html">Politicians Talking About Weed: The Supercut</a>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: small;">(HuffPost, 2012)&nbsp;</span><br /><br />•&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe-W4K6JVAw">Tim James: "American English"</a>&nbsp;(featured on MSNBC and&nbsp;<a href="http://swampland.time.com/2010/05/19/spoofing-alabama/">TIME</a>.com)<br /><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">•&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGbOPxhFSuv4kAbaEppRA7w">Romney Rock!</a>&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">(</span><a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/samimain/romney-rock-is-a-wonderful-new-parody-series-5pfv" style="font-weight: normal;">Featured in BuzzFeed</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">)</span>&nbsp;</span></h1><div><br /></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-28656572036077127282017-02-12T08:59:00.001-08:002018-01-02T14:19:24.766-08:00A View From The Frontlines<i><span style="font-size: large;">A year working as a journalist in Israel and the Palestinian Territories made me rethink my positions on the conflict.</span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i><span style="font-size: large;">By Hunter Stuart</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Published Feb. 20, 2017 in <i>The Jerusalem Report</i> magazine</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Please read my follow-up&nbsp;<a href="http://thegreenamerican.tumblr.com/post/169089095890/putting-the-cart-before-the-horse-on-israel-palestine">at The Green American</a>.</i></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ce5iCtHEzf8/WKCURRJHL6I/AAAAAAAAB7w/2Dsa16TQxS0u5aqzJfI37qta-iXLfnkAgCLcB/s1600/Jrep%2Bview%2Bfrom%2Bfrontlines.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ce5iCtHEzf8/WKCURRJHL6I/AAAAAAAAB7w/2Dsa16TQxS0u5aqzJfI37qta-iXLfnkAgCLcB/s1600/Jrep%2Bview%2Bfrom%2Bfrontlines.png" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /><span style="text-indent: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">In</span></b><span style="font-size: 20px;"> the summer of 2015, just three days after I moved to Israel for a year-and-a-half stint freelance reporting in the region, I wrote down my feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A friend of mine in New York had mentioned that it would be interesting to see if living in Israel would change the way I felt. My friend probably suspected that things would look differently from the front-row seat, so to speak.</span></span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Boy was he right.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">The belief that Israel is unjustly bullying the Palestinians is an inextricable part of this pantheon. Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">“I believe Israel should relinquish control of all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank,” I wrote on July 11, 2015, from a park near my new apartment in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. “The occupation is an act of colonialism that only creates suffering, frustration and despair for millions of Palestinians.”</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Perhaps predictably, this view didn’t play well among the people I met during my first few weeks in Jerusalem, which, even by Israeli standards, is a conservative city. My wife and I had moved to the Jewish side of town, more or less by chance ‒ the first Airbnb host who accepted our request to rent a room happened to be in the Nachlaot neighborhood where even the hipsters are religious. As a result, almost everyone we interacted with was Jewish Israeli and very supportive of Israel. I didn’t announce my pro-Palestinian views to them ‒ I was too afraid. But they must have sensed my antipathy (I later learned this is a sixth sense Israelis have).&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">During my first few weeks in Jerusalem, I found myself constantly getting into arguments about the conflict with my roommates and in social settings. Unlike waspy New England, Israel does not afford the privilege of politely avoiding unpleasant political conversations. Outside of the Tel Aviv bubble, the conflict is omnipresent; it affects almost every aspect of life. Avoiding it simply isn’t an option.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">During one such argument, one of my roommates ‒ an easygoing American-Jewish guy in his mid-30s ‒ seemed to be suggesting that all Palestinians were terrorists. I became annoyed and told him it was wrong to call all Palestinians terrorists, that only a small minority supported terrorist attacks. My roommate promptly pulled out his laptop, called up a 2013 Pew Research poll and showed me the screen. I saw that Pew’s researchers had done a survey of thousands of people across the Muslim world, asking them if they supported suicide bombings against civilians in order to “defend Islam from its enemies.” The survey found that 62 percent of Palestinians believed such terrorist acts against civilians were justified in these circumstances. And not only that, the Palestinian territories were the only place in the Muslim world where a majority of citizens supported terrorism; everywhere else it was a minority ‒ from Lebanon and Egypt to Pakistan and Malaysia.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">I didn’t let my roommate win the argument that night -- the bickering continued until the early morning hours. But the statistic stuck with me.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Less than a month later, in October 2015, a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jewish-Israelis began. Nearly every day, an angry, young Muslim Palestinian was stabbing or trying to run over someone with his car. A lot of the violence was happening in Jerusalem, some of it just steps from where my wife and I had moved into an apartment of our own, and lived and worked and went grocery shopping.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">At first, I’ll admit, I didn’t feel a lot of sympathy for Israelis. Actually, I felt hostility. I felt that they were the cause of the violence. I wanted to shake them and say, “Stop occupying the West Bank, stop blockading Gaza, and Palestinians will stop killing you!” It seemed so obvious to me; how could they not realize that all this violence was a natural, if unpleasant, reaction to their government’s actions?&nbsp;</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">IT WASN’T until the violence became personal that I began to see the Israeli side with greater clarity. As the “Stabbing Intifada” (as it later became known) kicked into full gear, I traveled to the impoverished East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan for a story I was writing.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">As soon as I arrived, a Palestinian kid who was perhaps 13 years old pointed at me and shouted “Yehudi!” which means “Jew” in Arabic. Immediately, a large group of his friends who’d been hanging out nearby were running toward me with a terrifying sparkle in their eyes. “Yehudi! Yehudi!” they shouted. I felt my heart start to pound. I shouted at them in Arabic “Ana mish yehudi! Ana mish yehudi!” (“I’m not Jewish, I’m not Jewish!”) over and over. I told them, also in Arabic, that I was an American journalist who “loved Palestine.” They calmed down after that, but the look in their eyes when they first saw me is something I’ll never forget. Later, at a house party in Amman, I met a Palestinian guy who’d grown up in Silwan. “If you were Jewish, they probably would have killed you,” he said.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">I made it back from Silwan that day in one piece; others weren’t so lucky. In Jerusalem, and across Israel, the attacks against Jewish Israelis continued. My attitude began to shift, probably because the violence was, for the first time, affecting me directly.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">I found myself worrying that my wife might be stabbed while she was on her way home from work. Every time my phone lit up with news of another attack, if I wasn’t in the same room with her, I immediately sent her a text to see if she was OK.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AEWkRoCu_2c/WkfpoKNCglI/AAAAAAAACKI/QNREp5AtDgA3nUJ3va76yqHJ8k-q5OoigCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-30%2Bat%2B1.31.16%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" data-original-height="597" data-original-width="594" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AEWkRoCu_2c/WkfpoKNCglI/AAAAAAAACKI/QNREp5AtDgA3nUJ3va76yqHJ8k-q5OoigCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-12-30%2Bat%2B1.31.16%2BPM.png" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><i>Me at a destroyed home in the Qalandiya Refugee Camp near Ramallah, Sept. 2016. (Photo by Malak Hasan.)</i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /></div><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Then a friend of mine ‒ an older Jewish Israeli guy who’d hosted my wife and me for dinner at his apartment in the capital’s Talpiot neighborhood ‒ told us that his friend had been murdered by two Palestinians the month before on a city bus not far from his apartment. I knew the story well ‒ not just from the news, but because I’d interviewed the family of one of the Palestinian guys who’d carried out the attack. In the interview, his family told me how he was a promising young entrepreneur who was pushed over the edge by the daily humiliations wrought by the occupation. I ended up writing <a href="http://www.albawaba.com/news/knife-intifada-east-jerusalem-daily-frustrations-push-normal-people-over-edge-781764">a very sympathetic story</a> about the killer for a Jordanian news site called Al Bawaba News.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Writing about the attack with the detached analytical eye of a journalist, I was able to take the perspective that (I was fast learning) most news outlets wanted – that Israel was to blame for Palestinian violence. But when I learned that my friend’s friend was one of the victims, it changed my way of thinking. I felt horrible for having publicly glorified one of the murderers. The man who’d been murdered, Richard Lakin, was originally from New England, like me, and had taught English to Israeli and Palestinian children at a school in Jerusalem. He believed in making peace with the Palestinians and “never missed a peace rally,” according to his son.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">By contrast, his killers ‒ who came from a middle-class neighborhood in East Jerusalem and were actually quite well-off relative to most Palestinians ‒ had been paid 20,000 shekels ($5,300 USD)* to storm the bus that morning with their cowardly guns. More than a year later, you can still see their faces plastered around East Jerusalem on posters hailing them as martyrs. (One of the attackers, Baha Aliyan, 22, was killed at the scene; the second, Bilal Ranem, 23, was captured alive.)&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Being personally affected by the conflict caused me to question how forgiving I’d been of Palestinian violence previously. Liberals, human-rights groups and most of the media, though, continued to blame Israel for being attacked. Ban Ki-moon, for example, who at the time was the head of the United Nations, said in January 2016 ‒ as the streets of my neighborhood were stained with the blood of innocent Israeli civilians ‒ that it was “human nature to react to occupation.” In fact, there is no justification for killing someone, no matter what the political situation may or may not be, and Ban’s statement rankled me.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">SIMILARLY, THE way that international NGOs, European leaders and others criticized Israel for its “shoot to kill” policy during this wave of terrorist attacks began to annoy me more and more.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">In almost any nation, when the police confront a terrorist in the act of killing people, they shoot him dead and human-rights groups don’t make a peep. This happens in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh; it happens in Germany and England and France and Spain, and it sure as hell happens in the US (see San Bernardino and the Orlando nightclub massacre, the Boston Marathon bombings and others). Did Amnesty International condemn Barack Obama or Abdel Fattah al-Sisi or Angela Merkel or François Hollande when their police forces killed a terrorist? Nope. But <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/israeli-forces-must-end-pattern-of-unlawful-killings-in-west-bank/">they made a point of condemning Israel</a>.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">What’s more, I started to notice that the media were unusually fixated on highlighting the moral shortcomings of Israel, even as other countries acted in infinitely more abominable ways. If Israel threatened to relocate a collection of Palestinian agricultural tents, as they did in the West Bank village of Sussiya in the summer of 2015, for example, the story made international headlines for weeks. The liberal outrage was endless. Yet, when Egypt’s president used bulldozers and dynamite <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/world/middleeast/egypt-sinai-peninsula-gaza-buffer-zone.html?_r=0">to demolish an entire neighborhood</a> in the Sinai Peninsula in the name of national security, people scarcely noticed.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Where do these double standards come from?&nbsp;</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">I’ve come to believe it’s because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeals to the appetites of progressive people in Europe, the US and elsewhere. They see it as a white, first world people beating on a poor, third world one. It’s easier for them to become outraged watching two radically different civilizations collide than it is watching Alawite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims in Syria, for example, because to a Western observer the difference between Alawite and Sunni is too subtle to fit into a compelling narrative that can be easily summarized on Facebook.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Unfortunately for Israel, videos on social media that show US-funded Jewish soldiers shooting tear gas at rioting Arab Muslims is Hollywood-level entertainment and fits perfectly with the liberal narrative that Muslims are oppressed and Jewish Israel is a bully.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">I admire the liberal desire to support the underdog. They want to be on the right side of history, and their intentions are good. The problem is that their beliefs often don’t square with reality.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">In reality, things are much, much more complex than a five-minute spot on the evening news or a two paragraph-long Facebook status will ever be able to portray. As a friend told me recently, “The reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so intractable is that both sides have a really, really good point.”</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Unfortunately, not enough people see it that way. I recently bumped into an old friend from college who told me that a guy we’d both known when we were freshmen had been active in Palestinian protests for a time after graduating. The fact that a smart, well-educated kid from Vermont, who went to one of the best liberal arts schools in the US, traveled thousands of miles to throw bricks at Israeli soldiers is very, very telling.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">* * *</span></div><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">THERE’S AN old saying that goes, “If you want to change someone’s mind, first make them your friend.” The friends I made in Israel forever changed my mind about the country and about the Jewish need for a homeland. But I also spent a lot of time traveling in the Palestinian territories getting to know Palestinians. I spent close to six weeks visiting Nablus and Ramallah and Hebron, and even the Gaza Strip. I met some incredible people in these places; I saw generosity and hospitality unlike anywhere else I’ve ever traveled to. I’ll be friends with some of them for the rest of my life. But almost without fail, their views of the conflict and of Israel and of Jewish people in general were extremely disappointing.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">First of all, even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100 percent of Israel ‒ not just the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. They simply will not be content with a two-state solution ‒ what they want is to return to their ancestral homes in Ramle and Jaffa and Haifa and other places in 1948 Israel, within the Green Line. And they want the Israelis who live there now to leave. They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion, of taking back “their” land.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">To me, however morally complicated the creation of Israel may have been, however many innocent Palestinians were killed and displaced from their homes in 1948 and again in 1967, Israel is now a fact, accepted by almost every government in the world (including many in the Middle East). But the ongoing desire of Palestinians to wipe Israel off the map is unproductive and backward-looking and the West must be very careful not to encourage it.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">The other thing is that a large percentage of Palestinians, even among the educated upper class, believe that most Islamic terrorism is actually engineered by Western governments to make Muslims look bad. I know this sounds absurd. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s comical until you hear it repeated again and again as I did. I can hardly count how many Palestinians told me the stabbing attacks in Israel in 2015 and 2016 were fake or that the CIA had created ISIS.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">For example, after the November 2015 ISIS shootings in Paris that killed 150 people, a colleague of mine ‒ an educated 27-year-old Lebanese-Palestinian journalist ‒ casually remarked that those massacres were “probably” perpetrated by the Mossad. Though she was a journalist like me and ought to have been committed to searching out the truth no matter how unpleasant, this woman was unwilling to admit that Muslims would commit such a horrific attack, and all too willing ‒ in defiance of all the facts ‒ to blame it on Israeli spies.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">USUALLY WHEN I travel, I try to listen to people without imposing my own opinion. To me that’s what traveling is all about ‒ keeping your mouth shut and learning other perspectives. But after 3-4 weeks of traveling in Palestine, I grew tired of these conspiracy theories.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">“Arabs need to take responsibility for certain things,” I finally shouted at a friend I’d made in Nablus the third or fourth time he tried to deflect blame from Muslims for Islamic terrorism. “Not everything is America’s fault.” My friend seemed surprised by my vehemence and let the subject drop ‒ obviously I’d reached my saturation point with this nonsense.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">I know a lot of Jewish-Israelis who are willing to share the land with Muslim Palestinians, but for some reason finding a Palestinian who feels the same way was near impossible. Countless Palestinians told me they didn’t have a problem with Jewish people, only with Zionists. They seemed to forget that Jews have been living in Israel for thousands of years, along with Muslims, Christians, Druse, atheists, agnostics and others, more often than not, in harmony. Instead, the vast majority believe that Jews only arrived in Israel in the 20th century and, therefore, don’t belong here.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Of course, I don’t blame Palestinians for wanting autonomy or for wanting to return to their ancestral homes. It’s a completely natural desire; I know I would feel the same way if something similar happened to my own family. But as long as Western powers and NGOs and progressive people in the US and Europe fail to condemn Palestinian attacks against Israel, the deeper the conflict will grow and the more blood will be shed on both sides.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">I’m back in the US now, living on the north side of Chicago in a liberal enclave where most people ‒ including Jews ‒ tend to support the Palestinians’ bid for statehood, which is gaining steam every year in international forums such as the UN.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">Personally, I’m no longer convinced it’s such a good idea. If the Palestinians are given their own state in the West Bank, who’s to say they wouldn’t elect Hamas, an Islamist group committed to Israel’s destruction? That’s exactly what happened in Gaza in democratic elections in 2006. Fortunately, Gaza is somewhat isolated, and its geographic isolation ‒ plus the Israeli and Egyptian-imposed blockade ‒ limit the damage the group can do. But having them in control of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem is something Israel obviously doesn’t want. It would be suicide. And no country can be expected to consent to its own destruction.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">So, now, I don’t know what to think. I’m squarely in the center of one of the most polarized issues in the world. I guess, at least, I can say that, no matter how socially unacceptable it was, I was willing to change my mind.</span><br /><br style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;" /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;">If only more people would do the same.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">* Correction: Since publishing this story, it has been brought to my attention that Bilal Ranem and Baha Aliyan, the two Palestinians who shot up the bus in Jerusalem in October 2015, may not have been paid 20,000 shekels to carry out the attack. I got that information from <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-to-demolish-home-of-Armon-Hanatziv-terrorist-437531">this Jerusalem Post article</a>, which I now realize says only that the pair "obtained" 20,000 NIS before committing the attack, which could mean a variety of things. </i></div>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-50629751925733686002016-10-23T02:40:00.000-07:002016-10-24T18:43:38.971-07:00Casting Their Ballot For Trump<i><span style="font-size: large;">American citizens living in Israel lean Republican, and many, despite the scandals, are set to vote for Donald Trump, citing his position on Israel and the Middle East</span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i><span style="font-size: large;">By Hunter Stuart</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Published Oct. 2016 in <i>The Jerusalem Report </i>magazine</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">(scroll down for plain text)</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qS-k-iQ1DE4/WAyFckNDwLI/AAAAAAAAByQ/GtkSPRGnU1YkIzQKH4nPjvWp6H0HwyrPgCLcB/s1600/Jrep%2BTrump%2Bpiece.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qS-k-iQ1DE4/WAyFckNDwLI/AAAAAAAAByQ/GtkSPRGnU1YkIzQKH4nPjvWp6H0HwyrPgCLcB/s1600/Jrep%2BTrump%2Bpiece.png" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Yael Kaner grew up in a left-leaning home in Massachusetts during the 1960s and 1970s. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-31f1ec0c-f0e6-4996-01f0-19f576d840f6" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“I was brought up Democratic. That was my family’s tradition,” says Kaner, who is 57 and moved to Israel from Baltimore in 2011. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">But as Kaner became more religious, she “took a hard right.” &nbsp;It was in the 1990s, during the Clinton presidency, that she became a devoted Republican. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“I think it was the day that Bimbo No. 5 came up. I went to the phone book, looked up Republican, and wrote checks to every organization I could find!” says Kaner, who lives in Ma’aleh Adumim, a mega-settlement next to Jerusalem.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Kaner has voted Republican in every US presidential election since, and plans to vote for the GOP nominee, Donald Trump, in November. However, her loathing of the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, seems stronger than her affinity for Trump. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Her entire being offends me. She has terrible judgment! Just look what happened in Benghazi. I wouldn’t stand next to her in a lightning storm,” she says.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Among American citizens living in Israel, Kaner is, perhaps, not unique ‒ a majority of the 200,000 or so eligible US voters in Israel, analysts say, support the Republican Party over the Democratic Party. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">In the US, Jews vote overwhelmingly Democrat; in Israel not so much.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The thing about the American Jewish community in Israel is that it’s kind of the reverse of the Jewish community in America,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a professional pollster and political consultant, tells </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Jerusalem Report</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A poll conducted by iVoteIsrael, an allegedly non-partisan group that registers people in Israel to vote in US elections, found that in 20</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 85% percent of absentee voters cast ballots for the Republican nominee Mitt Romney and only 14% percent for Barack Obama. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">There are a number of reasons for American-Israelis’ preference for the GOP. First and foremost is religion.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Level of religious observance is the biggest predictor of Left-Right attitudes in Israel,” says Scheindlin. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Mitchell Barak, another American-Israeli political consultant, agrees: “If people are religious, they’re more likely to vote Republican because they want those conservative, wholesome Southern family values,” he says. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Then there’s foreign policy, specifically vis-a-vis Israel.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Americans come to Israel equally split between Democrats and the Republicans,” says Abe Katsman, the legal counsel for Republicans Overseas Israel, a non-profit group that functions as an arm of the Republican Party. But once they get there, he says, many gravitate to the Republican Party. “I guess when you have a front row seat to American Middle East policy, things look a bit different than they did before.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Republicans Overseas Israel has been hosting events and election drives to persuade more American-Israelis to cast ballots for Trump. The group organized a Hebrew-language campaign this year, which it has not done for previous elections, as a way of targeting people who identify more as Israeli than American, even though they have US citizenship.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“I think there’s a feeling, especially over, let’s say the last eight years, that who the president is matters a great deal both from a US perspective and from an Israeli perspective,” Katsman says, adding that the predominantly Hebrew-speaking demographic is “ripe for receiving that kind of message.”</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">US politicians from congressm</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">e</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">n to presidential candidates put time and resources into their Israel campaigns </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not just to get the votes but also for public-relations purposes.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Barak, Trump’s campaign in Israel may be geared more for US consumption than for local American-Israelis. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It seems to be that they are trying to make Trump more ‘kosher’ by showing he has support and a ground campaign here,” Barak says. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It also seems to try and make up for his shallow foreign policy experience and lack of any real policy or advisors by saying, ‘Look, Americans living in Israel support me, so I must be okay.’”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eitan Charnoff, iVoteIsrael’s national director, however, says the Israeli vote </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can influence the outcome of a presidential election, contrary to the popular belief that absentee voting doesn’t really matter.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There are a lot of misconceptions about voting from abroad,” Charnoff tells The Report. “In reality, there is a significant enough voter block here from the States, that we can actually sway the results of elections,” pointing out that in 2000, George </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">W.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Bush beat Al Gore by just 537 votes in Florida.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">In 2012, Israelis cast 7,500 ballots in Florida and 3,500 in Ohio, both crucial “swing states” that could go red or blue based on a few hundred votes. Such figures further demonstrate the influence Americans in Israel can have if they vote in the absentee ballot.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Which they likely will.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">American citizens of Israel are exceptionally enthusiastic about voting in US elections, much more so than Americans living in other countries such as Canada, Mexico or the United Kingdom.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“In the past two elections, 2012 and 2008, more Americans voted absentee from Israel than from any other country in the world,” Charnoff says. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">On the flip side, America, itself, is disproportionately fixated on what Israelis think about US elections.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“In a sense, we’ve got a megaphone in Israel,” Katsman says. “People want to know what things looks like from over here.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Trump, a Manhattan real estate mogul and reality TV star, has been inconsistent on his positions with regard to US intervention in the Middle East. On numerous occasions, he has taken an isolationist stance, arguing that the US has “become a dumping ground” for the world’s problems. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But he’s also argued for massive interventions abroad, the likes of which are controversial even among people who are typically in favor of such operations. For example, during a debate in March, Trump suggested that the US should send a ground invasion of 20,000-30,000 troops into Iraq and Syria to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">defeat ISIS.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the second presidential debate on October 9, he repeated his intention to “knock the hell out of ISIS,” and claimed the group had been created because of the “vacuum” left by Obama and Clinton.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Israel, specifically, Trump has alarmed conservatives by saying he’d be “neutral” on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which, as the Jewish newspaper </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Forward</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> points out, places him “to the left of every American president since [Dwight] Eisenhower, including [Jimmy] Carter and Obama.” But Trump backtracked on that statement not long after making it, and has since declared his unswerving support for the Jewish state, telling the newspaper </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Israel Hayom</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in May that he was “extremely strongly in favor of Israel” and that he will “make sure” that Israel will be “in very good shape forever.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">In interviews and conversations with a dozen American citizens who live in Israel, it was clear many like Trump’s position on Israel and the Middle East more than Clinton’s.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“He seems to have a better idea of what it’s all about,” says David Weissman, 35, a freelance writer and US army veteran who was stationed in Afghanistan before moving to Israel in 2013. “He’s not trying to force a two-state solution like his opponent.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">While Clinton often says she is devoted to keeping America’s relationship with Israel close ‒ “The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values,” she said during a speech to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC in March ‒ she also periodically speaks about the need to give Palestinians in the West Bank a state of their own. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">To many right-wing Jewish-Israelis, giving land and greater autonomy to West Bank Palestinians is seen as an existential threat.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I perceive it as threat to my ability to live,” says Kaner, who lives in the E1 Zone, a small but contentious area east of the Green Line, from Ma’aleh Adumim to East Jerusalem</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that the Israeli government wants to develop. The US government and others have said such development would threaten the viability of a future Palestinian state.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“From my backyard, you can see one of the proposed borders. I look at an Arab village from my window. It’s called Eizariya, which is where a lot of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shaheeds </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[“martyrs”] come from,” Kaner says. “It’s very scary.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Kaner is more comfortable with the Republican Party’s national platform ‒ which mentions Israel 19 times and says the party is opposed to “any measures intended to impose an agreement or to dictate borders [with the Palestinians]” ‒ than she is with the Democratic one, which mentions Israel only nine times and proclaims that “Palestinians should be free to govern themselves in their own viable state.” &nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">There are no reliable statistics for how American-Israelis vote since absentee ballots make exit polling impossible. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the past, says Sheldon Schorer, the former spokesman for Democrats Abroad Israel, the vote in Israel “pretty much paralleled” the vote in the US, with 72-78% of Jewish citizens voting Democrat. But that changed 10 or 15 years ago when larger numbers of religious</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ly</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-motivated American Jews began moving to Israel, many to the administered territories. These new </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">olim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, he says,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">were less comfortable with the Democrats’ support for a two-state solution largely because they themselves lived on settlements. Their influx into Israel over the past two decades may have signaled a trend toward the GOP among American Jews living in Israel, Schorer posits.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Still, Schorer claims that, even today, with so many religious-conservative American Zionists living here, the majority of American Jews in Israel support the Democratic Party. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">He wasn’t able to provide statistics to back up his claim, but he strongly questioned the legitimacy of iVoteIsrael’s 2012 survey ‒ the one that found 85% support among American-Israelis for Romney and just 14% for Obama, and which is one of the only pieces of hard evidence pointing to the supposed preponderance of Republicans in the Jewish state.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“They used a totally skewed sample,” Schorer claims. “They asked students at Yeshiva University who were known to be Republicans who they voted for. If you come to my backyard, I’ll give you 100% in favor of the Democrats, and that poll will be useless, too!”</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">iVoteIsrael disputes this, saying the survey had a large sample size of 1,700 people and was conducted at multiple events and through email and phone conversations.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Regardless, the poll is simply a snapshot of one election and, therefore, is not necessarily reflective of the Republican-Democrat breakdown among the 300,000-400,000 American citizens who have made Israel their home, Charnoff says. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Dislike of Obama in Israel is so high (a 2015 WIN/Gallup survey of 65 countries found only four with a more negative view) that, in 2012, Americans who live in Israel may have cast their ballots for the Republican Party more to illustrate their loathing of Obama than their affinity for Romney, a private equity executive who served as a governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Because Trump is such an unusual candidate, Scheindlin and Charnoff say it’s not so easy to assume the majority of American Jews in Israel will vote for him. “This election is going to be far less predictable,” says Charnoff. &nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Romney was a paragon of predictability, which is one of three qualities Israelis like to see in their leaders, says Barak, the political consultant. They also savor stability and experience. “We elected a 74-year-old overweight widower [Ariel Sharon] to be prime minister for the second time,” he said. “No country does that!” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Because he is prone to outbursts and changing his position on crucial issues, Trump is not always seen as “predictable” or “stable.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“All my Republican friends are scared of Trump ‒ everyone is,” says Arielle Adler, a 27-year-old non-profit worker in Jerusalem who moved to Israel after graduating from college and will vote for Clinton. “He doesn’t think before he speaks. He says whatever comes to mind. It’s terrifying.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">***</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">People who move to Israel from the US typically aren’t fleeing anything, not economic pressure, antisemitism or hardship, says Scheindlin, meaning they come mostly for ideological reasons, either on the Right or Left.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“They come because they are committed and passionate about Israel, each from his or her own direction,” she says. &nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scheindlin says the data she’s seen over the years suggests Americans in Israel are majority-Republican, but she says that majority might not be as large as people tend to think.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There’s a perception that Americans are disproportionately represented in the settlements, you know, this stereotype of the kind of radical West Bank settler, speaking Hebrew with a thick American accent. But there’s also an over-representation of Americans in left-leaning circles.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Adler supports giving more land and autonomy to Palestinians in the West Bank.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“We have to think about them, as well. Any solution other than a two-state solution or a three-state solution is scary for a Jew, whether you look at it in terms of demographics or in terms of terror,” she says, adding that Clinton would be a better mediator for peace negotiations than Trump would be. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Other Americans in Israel who are voting express distaste for Trump’s persona, particularly his past. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through stiffing building contractors and not paying federal taxes,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it just seems that he is an asshole,” says David Ross, 34, an entrepreneur in Jerusalem who also says he’ll vote for Clinton. “And now his candidacy is allowing all the other little assholes in the country to get a little bolder, to the point where there was a ‘White Lives Matter’ protest outside the NAACP office in Houston recently.”</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ross, who says he moved to Israel three years ago for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ideological</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reasons questions the popular notion that Trump will be “a better friend to Israel.”</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“George [W.] Bush was assumed to be a friend because of his Christian allegiances and overtures toward Israel, but he’s the one who brought us war in Iraq, which ultimately set the Middle East into a tailspin from which it’s still trying to recover,” says Ross. “So, I don’t put too much stock into ‘better friend’ or not.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Some Jewish Americans in Israel are concerned about Trump’s rhetoric toward minorities such as a proposed a blanket ban on Muslims entering the US; his characterization of Mexican immigrants as murderers, drug dealers and rapists; and mocking of people with disabilities. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I think Israelis ‒ and Jews to a certain extent ‒ need to be careful who they take as friends,” says Gabriel Avner, a 31-year-old editor who made </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">aliya</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from Maryland in 2002 and lives in Ramat Gan. “I don’t think US presidential candidates who are anti-Muslim are a good thing, especially someone trying to work for peaceful resolution here. I want someone who will have Israel’s back, but a good friend knows to nudge you and tell you when you’re making a mistake.” </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Trump also has been portrayed by some as anti-Semitic because of direct or retweeted comments saying Jews are good with money, a stereotype long used by antisemites to stir up hatred against Jewish communities around the world. Adding to this perception is the support Trump gets from white supremacist groups in the US whose attitudes toward Jews also are problematic.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Katsman, however, says he sees no evidence of a seed of antisemitism in Trump. “Quite the contrary. This is someone whose counsel [Jason Greenblatt], who sits next to him in his office for the last 20 years, is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">kippa</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-wearing Zionist Orthodox Jew. The Jewish connections are wide and widely-known,” he says. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">When asked about Trump’s refusal to condemn some of the extremist right-wing figures in America who have publicly shown support for him, such as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Katsman says Trump has “no love for unsavory white supremacist groups” but doesn’t necessarily have an obligation to disavow them. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“They may see in him something they like, but that doesn’t mean it’s part of a legitimate political platform,” he says.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“For example, let’s say that by getting control of immigration, and even enforcing the existing immigration laws that are on the books, that would have the effect of reducing the flow of populations that the white supremacist groups don’t like. Well, is that a reason to not enforce the laws that are on the books? Because the white supremacists also get ancillary benefits from this? No, we are doing it for national security reasons, and I don’t care what the white supremacists think. If they’re happy, they’re sad, that’s not even part of the equation.”</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Whether or not Trump’s proposed policies are borne of bigotry or a legitimate desire to get a handle on illegal immigration, some American-Israelis feel the direction he wants to take America is inconsistent with the nation’s values. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“I think Trump has the wrong vision for America,” said Avner. “America has a role to play in the world, of being an open society, and Trump and his message reject that vision. This is an important time for Americans to say what they are, what values they believe in.”</span></span></div>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-47688891998295717352016-10-23T02:22:00.003-07:002017-03-21T19:32:30.782-07:00A Troubling Mirror: Allegations by Breaking The Silence of IDF misdeeds have clearly struck a nerve<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">By Hunter Stuart</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Published in March 2016 in <i>The Jerusalem Report </i>magazine</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--LyaxocCHOg/WAyDGnvDv9I/AAAAAAAABx8/XXiJOItyds8QG5gpETdDe2lWdovFGKC1QCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-10-23%2Bat%2B4.28.33%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--LyaxocCHOg/WAyDGnvDv9I/AAAAAAAABx8/XXiJOItyds8QG5gpETdDe2lWdovFGKC1QCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-10-23%2Bat%2B4.28.33%2BAM.png" /></a></div><br /><br />Sandwiched between a highway and a strip club in an industrial part of Tel Aviv sit the offices of Breaking The Silence, Israel’s most hated NGO.<br /><br />Breaking The Silence is a group of IDF veterans who publish testimonies of disturbing and unethical things they say they witnessed while serving in the West Bank and Gaza. The group’s short-term goal is to show Israeli society the dark underbelly of the Palestinian occupation. In the long-term, Breaking The Silence wants to end the occupation completely. <br /><br />The office is unmarked: there’s no sign advertising its presence. One must walk through a pair of unwashed glass doors, up four flights of dusty stairs and pass the muster of an armed security guard stationed outside their front door, who stands warily beside a pack of Marlboros and a cup of instant coffee.<br /><br />Inside, the atmosphere is much livelier. The group’s spokesman, Achiya Schatz, greets The Jerusalem Report with a handshake and a broad smile. A documentary crew is positioned around him, filming our interaction. “They’re making a film about us, and everything that’s been going on lately,” explains Schatz, who is 30 and looks like he hasn’t shaved in a week.<br /><br />Inside the office, seven or eight activists sit at communal tables, working on laptops and talking animatedly. Next to a set of shelves lined with glossy black-and- white books containing hundreds of war testimonies is Yehuda Shaul, one of the group’s founders, asleep on a beanbag chair.<br /><br />If Breaking The Silence is a little tired these days, it’s no wonder. In the past couple months, the group has been through a whirlwind. They’ve been excoriated by the prime minister and a number of Israeli politicians, been banned from schools and army bases, targeted by vicious right-wing campaigns and infiltrated by moles wearing tiny secret video cameras and microphones. Most recently, a coalition of lawmakers introduced a bill to the Knesset to have the group outlawed entirely.<br /><br />Breaking The Silence’s detractors say it’s slandering Israeli soldiers abroad in order to undermine government policy in Israel; its supporters say it’s merely exercising its right to free speech. Either way, the fight over Breaking The Silence has grown into something much bigger: a fight over the very future of Israel.<br /><br />The controversy began in earnest in early December, when Breaking The Silence participated in a conference in New York where Israeli president Reuven Rivlin also spoke. Israel’s right-wing Channel 20 accused Rivlin of “spitting in the faces” of IDF soldiers by appearing at the event. Not long after, the ultranationalist organization Im Tirtzu released a video saying Breaking The Silence was staffed by foreign agents.<br /><br />The rhetoric against the group only went downhill from there. The next day on the Knesset floor, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Breaking The Silence of “trying to tie Israel’s hands in its attempts to defend itself.” A few weeks later, when a mother of six was slain in a terror attack in the West Bank, Eli Yishai, a former interior minister, said Breaking The Silence was responsible for the murder.<br /><br />In the past two months, Schatz says he and his colleagues have been getting near-daily death threats. Hence the armed guard, who was hired in December. The group’s members have received Facebook messages, phone calls, and letters all warning of violence. One read ‘Rabin was only the beginning, you’re next.’ The Israeli police are now involved in an effort to protect staff from being attacked. <br /><br />Breaking The Silence has clearly struck a nerve in Israel. After all, the things that the group is saying about the way Israeli soldiers treat Palestinians are shocking. They paint Israel as an inept and cruel occupier. One story, for example, that Shaul has told the media on several occasions, describes how he and other IDF soldiers on patrol in 2002 locked an innocent Palestinian family in the basement of their own home so the soldiers could watch a World Cup match.<br /><br />Other testimonies--which are almost always made anonymously--have claimed soldiers get high before going on reconnaissance tours, or have burst in on families in the middle of the night with no other purpose than to intimidate them or to “make their presence felt.”<br /><br />Most recently, after Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, Breaking The Silence published a 240-page report containing detailed testimonies from about 60 soldiers and officers who had served in the operation. Those testimonies, which are published on the Internet, say that the IDF’s guiding military principle during the battle, known as Operation Protective Edge, was one of “minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians.” The report also alleged that the IDF recklessly shelled civilian neighborhoods, causing “massive and unprecedented” harm to homes and infrastructure.<br /><br />The chief complaint many Israelis have against Breaking The Silence is that it chooses to ignore the official systems in place in Israel for IDF whistleblowers to lodge complaints, choosing instead to take their case directly to foreign countries for support.<br /><br />“Israel, as a functioning democracy, has established channels to prosecute such infractions” by IDF soldiers serving in the territories, wrote former Soviet prisoner Natan Sharansky a recent Haaretz column. Those channels are something that persecuted dissidents in the USSR “could only dream about,” wrote Sharansky, who is now head of the Jewish Agency.<br /><br />In mid-February, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said at an academic conference near Tel Aviv that he welcomed communication with Breaking The Silence and that he had instructed the IDF’s legal department to follow up on some of the claims the group had made. Breaking The Silence says it wrote to Eisenkot asking for a meeting about six weeks before it published its report on Operation Protective Edge. But Eisenkot’s office never responded, says Schatz.<br /><br />So is Breaking The Silence looking forward to more communication with the army going forward? Not really. “We have no problem to meet with the army, and to let them know what's going on and how we see stuff,” says Schatz. “But we don’t think they should be the one dealing with the consequences of what's going on the West Bank. The one who needs to deal with it is us--it’s the republic, it’s society, but not the army. The army is just the operational hand of the government.”<br /><br />This is the same reason Schatz gives when asked why Breaking The Silence chooses to avoid official channels for registering complaints about immoral or illegal incidents in the IDF. “You say official channels, but to do what? To say, ‘I want to change reality in the West Bank?’” Schatz says. “The thing is, it’s not about one or two incidents [where something bad happened]. It's about the whole mindset of the occupation."<br /><br />Though Breaking The Silence is unenthusiastic about starting a dialogue with the IDF, it may soon have no choice. The Israeli news site NRG reported in early February said that the IDF had asked the State Prosecutor’s Office to force Breaking The Silence to turn over testimonies that relate to alleged war crimes and other illegal conduct.<br /><br />The State Prosecutor then petitioned a magistrate court to force Breaking The Silence to give up the testimonies, the NRG report said.<br /><br />Breaking The Silence has no intention of doing this. “Our policy is clear. We’re happy to help where we can, but we’re not going to jeopardize any soldiers. We’re not going to expose them if they don’t want to be exposed,” says Schatz.<br /><br /><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The other reason Breaking The Silence rankles Israelis is because it does a lot of its publicity and fundraising abroad—mostly in Europe. The group received roughly NIS 3.5 million ($779,000 USD) in donations in 2014, according to its own financial records, which are publicly posted online. About 60 percent of the donations it receives each year come from foreign sources, either from European charities and development groups--many affiliated with Christian or Catholic churches--but also directly from foreign governments in Scandinavia and Western Europe, and from the European Union itself.</span></div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">“The problem with Breaking The Silence is that they say they care about the moral values of the IDF, but if that’s the case, why do they take the conversation outside of Israel?” says Itai Reuveni, a senior researcher with NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based group that investigates NGO activity in Israel. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Many Israelis object to the fact that European governments are giving substantial sums to effectively weaken the policies of Israel’s elected government. “I can’t imagine Israel trying to give money to interfere with the dispute over something like abortions in the United States,” said Yair Lapid, the leader of the secular moderate party Yesh Atid (“There Is A Future”), at a Jerusalem press conference in late January that <i>The Report</i> attended.</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Money aside, many Israelis also find it offensive that Breaking The Silence is using their country’s most sensitive moral dilemmas and exporting them to Europe to support a political agenda. “They explain things [about war] that are clear to Israelis, because they serve in the army and they know what’s going on,” says Matan Katzman, an officer in the IDF reserves who co-founded the soldiers’ organization “My Truth” over the summer as an antidote to Breaking The Silence. “But they go to audiences overseas that are very anti-Israel, and that’s the problem.”&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Breaking The Silence says it does not support the boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) campaign, which aims to put economic pressure on Israel to end the occupation. But the group occasionally collaborates with pro-BDS organizations. It also receives sizeable donations from European charities that fund pro-BDS groups, some of whom are radically anti-Israel. For example, the Irish charity Tr</span><span class="s2">ócaire</span><span class="s1">--which gave NIS 73,000 ($18,450 USD) to Breaking The Silence in 2014--also funds groups like Zochrot, an Israeli NGO that promotes awareness of the Nakba and speaks about the need to “de-Zionize” Israel. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>It’s foreign funding of this sort that’s the target of a new bill introduced to the Knesset in November by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The proposed law would require any NGO in Israel that receives more than half of its funding from foreign states to say so in its literature. Critics of the so-called transparency bill say it’s a way to stifle dissent by targeting left-wing groups; supporters say it’s merely a way to know which NGOs are beholden to foreign interests.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Left-wing civil society organizations in Israel aren’t the only ones looking for help overseas. Right-wing groups here also take their message abroad in order to garner support for political agendas at home. For example, pro-settler organizations in Israel raise millions of dollars from charities in the U.S. and elsewhere, funds that are used to buttress controversial settlement projects in the West Bank.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">So, if right-wing groups can raise support for the occupation overseas, Breaking The Silence has every right to fundraise abroad, too, Yuli Novak, the group’s 33-year-old executive director, tells The Report in Tel Aviv. And it’s all for a noble cause, she says:&nbsp; “For those of us who love Israel and believe the only way Israel can be a democracy is by ending the occupation, we feel this is our duty.”&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Support for Breaking The Silence is low among the Israeli public, but some high-ranking former officials from army, police and intelligence agencies in Israel have spoken in favor of the group’s right to exist. “Breaking the Silence protects IDF soldiers in the impossible situation in which politicians have abandoned them," read one recent ad in <i>Haaretz </i>that was published by former Shin Bet chief and former commander of the Israeli Navy Ami Ayalon, together with Israel Police Maj. Gen. (ret.) Alik Ron. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">“I see them as a group of warriors, none of whom decided to disobey any orders, none of whom decided not to join the service, and most of whom served in the best units in our army, which is how they came to see what they saw,” Ayalon, who is now a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, told <i>The Report</i> during a recent phone interview.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Ayalon stressed that he doesn’t support Breaking The Silence--he only supports their right to operate, which is different. “I hate what they do,” he said. “But they are the mirror that shows us who we are.” &nbsp;</span></div><br /><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Yet Israelis don’t seem to like their own reflection. War is hideous business, after all, and the effects of it are often equally ugly to behold. Breaking The Silence and its supporters are right when they say that a functioning democracy needs institutions that question and criticize the status quo. But if those institutions alienate the same people they claim to be helping, they may find their job just got a lot harder.&nbsp;</span></div>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-20629385775207627662016-07-20T06:57:00.001-07:002016-10-23T02:26:49.517-07:00Avocado Diplomacy: A visit to an Israeli-run agricultural project illustrates Jerusalem’s push into Africa <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Published in The Jerusalem Report, July 2016</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7uaDjJK-bY4/V6r4dib0SbI/AAAAAAAABq0/JcWLUNgjSPQwqteCMpVV-XSQ7hFEciC2gCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-10%2Bat%2B12.51.15%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7uaDjJK-bY4/V6r4dib0SbI/AAAAAAAABq0/JcWLUNgjSPQwqteCMpVV-XSQ7hFEciC2gCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-10%2Bat%2B12.51.15%2BPM.png" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;garamond&quot; , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;garamond&quot; , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">&nbsp;In</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">&nbsp;1960, prime minister David Ben</span><b style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia, &quot;times new roman&quot;, serif; font-size: x-large;">-</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Gurion said Israel’s aid to newly independent countries in Africa was “not a matter of philanthropy.” Israel, he said, was “no less in need of the fraternity of friendship of the new nations” than they were of Israel’s assistance.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><br /><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Though it’s been 66 years since his remarks, Ben<b>-</b>Gurion’s sentiment is no less true today, and Israel’s efforts to hammer out a mutually beneficial relationship with Africa can be seen on a small farm in rural Ethiopia on a recent July<b></b>morning, where a 59-year-old Israeli agronomist plods through the mud with a crowd of curious, giggling children trailing behind him.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The agronomist, Ofer Kahane, is the&nbsp;coordinator&nbsp;of an agricultural project in Ethiopia that trains local farmers how to grow and sell avocados to lucrative markets abroad. Kahane is an employee of Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, perhaps better known by its Hebrew acronym “MASHAV,” which runs the project together with the&nbsp;US&nbsp;Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Ethiopian Ministry&nbsp;of Agriculture.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">As a division of Israel’s&nbsp;Ministry of&nbsp;Foreign Affairs,&nbsp;the&nbsp;MASHAV’s goal is to use Israeli knowledge and technology to promote economic, social and environmental development in second- and third-world countries.&nbsp;The MASHAV was founded in 1957, and&nbsp;since then&nbsp;the agency says it has trained over&nbsp;250,000 people in 132 different countries around the world. </span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">In return for imparting its agricultural expertise, Israel hopes&nbsp;that&nbsp;Ethiopia will consider it an ally.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The Jewish state is making new efforts to get closer to sub-Saharan Africa, in the hopes that Africa will support Israel at the United Nations and&nbsp;at&nbsp;other international forums where&nbsp;the Jewish state&nbsp;faces intense opposition from much of the Muslim world.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Israel’s friendship with Ethiopia goes back 3,000 years to the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Jerusalem, where she was said to have had intimate relations<b>&nbsp;</b>with King Solomon and given birth to his son on her way home. Ethiopians and some historians believe that the son, Menelik, later went to visit his father<b>,&nbsp;</b>King Solomon<b>,</b>&nbsp;in Jerusalem, returning to Ethiopia with a number of Israelite noblemen, who stole the Ark of the Covenant from the First Temple in Jerusalem and brought it with them to Ethiopia. When he returned to Ethiopia, Menelik founded the Solomonic Dynasty, which ruled the nation for thousands of years thereafter. Meanwhile, the Ark was placed inside a small chapel in northern Ethiopia ‒ or so the Ethiopians believe.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">But it wasn’t until the 1950s and 1960s, when both Israel and Africa were emerging as newly independent states, that ties between the two strengthened and became official.&nbsp;As&nbsp;Prime Minister,&nbsp;Ben<b>-</b>Gurion invested in building relationships in East, Central and West Africa. Israel had much in common with many of these countries: “Like them, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate,” said Ben<b>-</b>Gurion’s foreign minister, Golda Meir, who made many trips to Africa during that time.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Israel “had been forced to find solutions to problems that large, wealthy, powerful states have never encountered,” she said, and<b>,</b>&nbsp;was therefore<b>,</b>perfectly suited to partnering with them.</span><br /><div style="font-family: garamond, serif;"><br /></div></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Ben<b>-</b>Gurion saw Ethiopia as one of the cornerstones of regional Israeli support. In the 1960s, he strove to build ties with three influential, non-Arab countries: namely, Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia. Ben<b>-</b>Gurion hoped these three alliances would form a large triangle of support around the Jewish state, and he called his grand theory “The Alliance of the Peripheries.” (Iran at the time was a Western-friendly nation, and Turkey was more secular than it is today.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Though it was a young nation, Israel had relatively advanced agricultural, medical and military knowledge that it deftly wielded to forge tight bonds with the new African nations, Dr. Emmanuel Navon, an international relations lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, tells&nbsp;<i>The Jerusalem Report.&nbsp;</i></span><br /><i><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">In Ethiopia<b>,</b>&nbsp;specifically, Israel sent military advisers to aid the ruling regime of Emperor Haile Selassie, who claimed to be the 225th descendant of King Solomon, and who ruled Ethiopia from 1941 to 1974. Israeli intelligence helped Emperor Selassie keep the status quo; even helping him to crush a<i>&nbsp;coup&nbsp;</i>attempt in 1960 by his Imperial Bodyguard, which had been swiftly engineered while Selassie was on a state visit to Brazil.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">In the 1960s and early 1970s, the advantages of befriending Ethiopia and other African nations included<b>,</b>&nbsp;first and foremost<b>,</b>&nbsp;the fact that they had votes at the UN General Assembly. Now and then, one of the African countries that Israel had invested in would earn a seat on the UN Security Council. (In June, Ethiopia was elected to a non-permanent seat, where it will serve from 2017 to 2019.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><b><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">‘An ability to improvise’</span></b><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Kahane says he can still recall a tractor donated by USAID to the kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley where he grew up in the 1960s. He remembers the logo on the tractor ‒ it was an image of two hands shaking.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;Like&nbsp;Golda&nbsp;Meir, he believes&nbsp;that&nbsp;Israel’s&nbsp;relatively recent experience as a developing nation<b>&nbsp;</b>makes it more effective at development work in Africa.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">“We are more flexible than other Western countries,” he says. “We have a better ability to improvise because of our experience. The Europeans and the Americans are very conservative. They can only do what they know.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">For the agriculture training project in Ethiopia, USAID contributes 75 percent of the $700,000 annual budget for the program, with MASHAV paying the rest. The program started 11<b>&nbsp;</b>years ago, Kahane says, and is scheduled to end in October 2019.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Although agriculture is a huge industry in Ethiopia ‒ it employs almost 80<b>%</b>of the population and contributes 42<b>%</b>&nbsp;of Ethiopia’s gross domestic product ‒ most of the nation’s farms are small and disconnected from one another. The Ethiopian government, which still hasn’t reformed many of its old Communist ways, owns almost all the country’s land. This makes large-scale, commercial farming difficult.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The cool, mountainous climate of Ethiopia makes it the ideal environment for growing avocados, which originally come from Mexico, Kahane says, while inspecting a fat avocado tree on the farm,&nbsp;that&nbsp;belongs to a handsome Ethiopian farmer named Kidane Tesfaye. This tree started as a MASHAV sapling a few years ago, and it’s part of Kahane’s job to make sure it’s being grown properly.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">“Many times<b>,&nbsp;</b>the farmer in Ethiopia gets something for free and he doesn’t care about it,” Kahane sighs.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">But this particular tree is doing well ‒ in fact, the whole farm is. Kahane says that last year, two tons of avocados were harvested&nbsp;here. He believes that as soon as the farmers see that they can make money by growing avocados, the industry will thrive in Ethiopia. The fruit from the trees Kahane is inspecting today are bound for markets in the Persian Gulf and in Europe. </span><br /><div style="font-family: garamond, serif;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: garamond, serif; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DquOZoAWqRU/V4-eIPVRMLI/AAAAAAAABqI/lMthngWJW2YYZUugpXKb2oLCn1CFCgBQwCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-07-20%2Bat%2B11.51.11%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DquOZoAWqRU/V4-eIPVRMLI/AAAAAAAABqI/lMthngWJW2YYZUugpXKb2oLCn1CFCgBQwCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-07-20%2Bat%2B11.51.11%2BAM.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="color: #222222; font-size: large; text-align: start;">Kidane Tesfaye on his farm near Butajira. Behind him is one of the MASHAV's avocado trees. (photo: Hunter Stuart)&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="font-family: garamond, serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: garamond, serif;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The $175,000 a year the government of Israel spends on the MASHAV program in Ethiopia is very little compared to the what other countries (such as the US,&nbsp;UK or Germany) spend here.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">“We use our money efficiently,” he says. “Because there are many problems in Israel that we could be spending it on, and we think of it in that context.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The&nbsp;MASHAV has helped set up six nurseries around the country that grow saplings of fruit and vegetable trees to distribute to local farmers. When the project concludes in 2019, the Ethiopian&nbsp;Ministry of&nbsp;Agriculture plans to take over where the Israelis left off, and replicate it 80 times over.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><b><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Ethiopia on the brink&nbsp;</span></b><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Israel’s efforts to befriend Africa in the 1950s and 1960s fell apart in the 1970s. At the time, the Arab world had suffered two humiliating defeats by Israel (one in 1967 and the other in 1973), and began to pressure sub-Saharan Africa to sever its ties with the Jewish state. If Africa kept up close relations with Israel, the Arab world ‒ led by Saudi Arabia and Libya ‒ would raise prices on the oil it sold to Africa, on which Africa depended to survive. Most of sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia, acquiesced and cut ties with Israel accordingly.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">To the new Jewish state, which had invested relatively heavily in its new partnerships, the severing of diplomacy was a betrayal, said Navon, and it took decades to mend the broken relationships.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;In Ethiopia, the Communist “Derg” regime, which came to power in 1974 after dethroning Selassie, had a friendly relationship with Israel, but hid it from the world.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Since 1991, when a coalition of rebel forces led by Ethiopia’s northern Tigray tribe defeated the Derg and installed themselves as the country’s new rulers, Ethiopia has had a sunnier relationship with Israel. Meles Zenawi, who was prime minister of Ethiopia for 17 years after helping to overthrow the brutal Derg, visited Israel in 2004.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now say<b>s&nbsp;</b>he wants to take Israel “back to Africa.” Netanyahu made a four-day trip to East Africa in early July, where he visited Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia. He was the first Israeli prime minister ever to visit Ethiopia, and the first to visit sub-Saharan Africa in 30 years, perhaps signifying how badly relations had frayed after the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The purpose of Netanyahu’s trip was not only to win votes at the UN&nbsp;<b>(</b>although that strategy has begun to pay off for Israel: in 2015, Nigeria and Rwanda abstained from a Palestinian statehood resolution at the UN, causing the measure to fail by a single vote). Netanyahu is also trying to persuade African leaders to grant Israel “observer status” at the African Union (AU), the 54-member body whose mission is to increase cooperation across the African continent. The AU’s headquarters are in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. </span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Promoting economic ties was another of Netanyahu’s reasons for the Africa trip. Eighty business executives representing 50 companies in Israel accompanied him on the trip, presumably to forge partnerships with African companies.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Israel’s exports to Africa last year amounted to about $1 billion, which is just two percent of its total exports. But Ohad Cohen, who is head of foreign trade at the Ministry of Economy and Industry, told&nbsp;<i>The Wall Street Journal&nbsp;</i>on July 4 that Israel is working to send more of its exports to growing markets in Africa, as a safeguard against increased volatility with traditional trade partners in the E.U. and US. What’s more, Netanyahu’s administration said recently that it’s planning a $13 million development package to strengthen economic ties and cooperation with African nations.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Ethiopia’s position as a Christian-ruled nation in the sometimes-volatile horn of East Africa make it a crucial Israeli ally, Aryeh Oded, who was an Israeli diplomat stationed in Africa in the 1960s, said in a recent phone call with The Report. Ethiopia is surrounded on almost all sides by Muslim regimes, and it has a long border with the failed state of Somalia, for example, where the militant group Al Shabab rules large swathes of territory. Al Shabab has successfully carried out deadly attacks in Ethiopia, Kenya, and elsewhere in the area, says Oded, who is currently Head of the Africa Unit at Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Truman Institute.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Ethiopia, which is the second most-populous country in sub-Saharan Africa<b>,</b>(after Nigeria),&nbsp;also has a sizeable Muslim population, which has grown rapidly in recent decades. These days, Muslims are said to make up about half of Ethiopia’s population of 97 million<b>.&nbsp;</b>The Ethiopian government itself is dominated by one Orthodox Christian tribe known as the Tigray.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;Although the current government claims to grant equality and freedom of religion to all Ethiopians, in practice<b>,</b>&nbsp;it tends to favor Ethiopia’s large Christian minority (about 41 million people).</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">All of this is to say that Israel has an interest in keeping Ethiopia a Christian stronghold in a Muslim-dominated region.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">“If Ethiopia fell to the Muslims, it would be like an open hole, because it’s the gate into Africa,” Kahane says later that afternoon, over a plates of&nbsp;<i>shiro</i>&nbsp;at a restaurant in the nearby town of Butajira. </span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Demographic problems aside, Ethiopia also has been dealing with an uptick in internal unrest lately. The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front has responded to mostly&nbsp;peaceful protests by the Oromo ethnic group in recent months with shocking violence, killing hundreds&nbsp;of people&nbsp;by opening fire on demonstrators, or torturing people to death in detention. The protests by the Oromo, who are the largest of Ethiopia’s 14 ethnic groups and many of whom are Muslim, began in November 2015 when a government-sponsored plan to expand Addis Ababa (population 3.5 million) onto their ancestral lands sparked outrage.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Though the government says it has put the Addis Ababa expansion plan on hold, its rough handling of the protests has created new resentments. Anger over the government’s sale of land to foreign investors such as China only stokes the flames of Oromo indignation.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">“Holding things together in Ethiopia is difficult right now,” Kahane says. “And it’s not so clear, especially to a foreigner, what exactly is happening.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">A young journalist I met in the eastern city of Harar in July, who is Muslim, said he had been imprisoned for three months by the Ethiopian government as punishment for having published something to which the government objected.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Media freedom groups have criticized Ethiopia for a tightening clampdown on the press<b>,</b>&nbsp;and that clampdown may explain the current inscrutability of what’s happening in the country. </span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Unfortunately, Ethiopia is also being further destabilized on a grand scale by climate change<b>&nbsp;</b>and&nbsp;is currently experiencing its worst drought in half a century. The drought is thought to be the result of warming ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, a weather pattern that’s popularly known as “El&nbsp;Niño.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Rising ocean temperatures, in turn, have caused rains to fail in large parts of central and eastern Ethiopia, which has led to shrunken harvests and the death of up to 1 million livestock, according to a recent article in&nbsp;<i>Time Magazine</i>&nbsp;by Daniel Speckhard, who’s president of Lutheran World Relief, a US-based non-governmental organization that does development work in East Africa.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Perhaps even more worrying is that the drought is predicted to cause a food crisis that will require humanitarian aid for at least 10 million people.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Nevertheless, Ethiopia has a lot going for it: The International Monetary Fund says it has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, with growth rates consistently hitting 8-11 percent over the past 10 years. Poverty rates have plunged, and primary school enrollment has quadrupled in the past two decades, according to the World Bank.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Yet<b>,</b>&nbsp;the official figures clash with what one sees on the streets, where children in ragged clothes swarm around foreigners begging for change, and most families live in tiny, one-room&nbsp;houses&nbsp;with dirt floors and open gutters in their front yards.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">A schoolteacher in Lalibela lamented that the $90 she earns a month is hardly enough to feed her four children, let alone send them to university when they finish secondary school. Still, she’s faring better than 17 million of her fellow citizens, who are unable to find a steady job, even a low-paying one.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Ethiopia is also beset by frequent electricity outages, even in the capital, and the Internet, when it works at all, crawls along at a snail’s pace. Foreign banks are largely prohibited from making loans in the country, and are not allowed to open international branches here, which discourages investment.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">“There’s no free trade in Ethiopia,” says Kahane on the drive back to Addis Ababa, while expertly avoiding the livestock and people walking on the newly-paved highway. “Communism is still in the blood. Everything is under state control.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">As we enter the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Kahane peers through the window at a partially&nbsp;constructed building,&nbsp;that is silhouetted like a cement ribcage against the gray sky.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">“You see buildings like this one all over. It’s been standing empty like this already a few years,” he says<b>,</b>&nbsp;questioning why Ethiopian banks continue to give loans for projects that go nowhere.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Ethiopia’s government aims to make the country middle income by 2025. But if Ethiopia wants to pull itself out of the third world and into the community of developed nations, it has a lot of work to do. And if the government can’t alleviate the suffering of its own citizens,<b>&nbsp;</b>avocados or no avocados, it may not make a very useful ally for Israel.&nbsp;</span></div><div><br /></div>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-1495772503620004252016-06-09T01:59:00.000-07:002016-06-09T13:51:32.381-07:00Anarchy In The Jewish State: Hunter Stuart hangs out on the margins with anarchists who want to abolish the governmentPublished in&nbsp;<i>The Jerusalem Report</i>&nbsp;magazine in June, 2016.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">[scroll down for plain-text]</span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rR5WR77yRsM/V1ktith7A3I/AAAAAAAABmk/vt-JnDyfP_oXFvq31sdwXoKgTFHpbLc2ACLcB/s1600/anarchy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rR5WR77yRsM/V1ktith7A3I/AAAAAAAABmk/vt-JnDyfP_oXFvq31sdwXoKgTFHpbLc2ACLcB/s1600/anarchy.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZP_BmgLdpXE/V1ktwI6XIHI/AAAAAAAABms/cUOcVv4J2IUgPPrKovkzsM4V5TA6falZgCLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.53.11%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZP_BmgLdpXE/V1ktwI6XIHI/AAAAAAAABms/cUOcVv4J2IUgPPrKovkzsM4V5TA6falZgCLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.53.11%2BAM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nB7gbEUJteQ/V1kt3_Ssv6I/AAAAAAAABm0/Z3pyPPilJTU7J-97n5tYP_F1grIIkKyJwCLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.53.49%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nB7gbEUJteQ/V1kt3_Ssv6I/AAAAAAAABm0/Z3pyPPilJTU7J-97n5tYP_F1grIIkKyJwCLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.53.49%2BAM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z4eG55PWfA0/V1kt-2dnolI/AAAAAAAABm8/XrkM58YDMzIipWoCv_26xhwCfqEdg6SFACLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.54.17%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z4eG55PWfA0/V1kt-2dnolI/AAAAAAAABm8/XrkM58YDMzIipWoCv_26xhwCfqEdg6SFACLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.54.17%2BAM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DlU2a_W5NR4/V1kuHF7T_lI/AAAAAAAABnI/-AkqLQWoONoHWEqy7pW7i3OuhIQrnTtewCLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.54.45%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DlU2a_W5NR4/V1kuHF7T_lI/AAAAAAAABnI/-AkqLQWoONoHWEqy7pW7i3OuhIQrnTtewCLcB/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-06-09%2Bat%2B11.54.45%2BAM.png" /></a></div><br /><br /><i><br /></i><i><span style="font-size: large;">Anarchy In The Jewish State: Hunter Stuart hangs out on the margins with anarchists who want to abolish the government</span></i><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The Jerusalem Report magazine: June 2016</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">By Hunter Stuart</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Nine anarchists crowd into the small room, and take seats on the floor. A lightly-mohawked fellow named Tal comes around and takes everyone’s phones.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“We don’t want people listening in on the meeting,” Tal explains, disappearing from the room with an armful of smartphones, which he empties into a drawer in the kitchen.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Bang</i>! The drawer shuts, and the meeting can begin. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">This is the monthly assembly of the Israeli anarcho-communist group Unity, a six-year-old organization based in Tel Aviv and Haifa that supports dissolving Israel’s borders and abolishing the government in favor of “a non-national society.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Unity does not pretend it can overthrow the Israeli and Palestinian governments on its own. Its mission is merely to raise awareness about anarchism. “We’re a propaganda organization,” says Yigal Levin, 29, one of the group’s founders. Unity’s online literature, which is published in Hebrew, Arabic and English, explains that in addition to abolishing Israel’s borders, the group opposes a two-state solution.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“We are certain that the replacement of a dispossessive settler state with a joint state in Palestine… will not constitute a solution for most problems facing the Hebrew and Arabic society in this country,” the group’s manifesto proclaims. “We support a more thorough, radical process of de-colonization.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">I spent two weeks in May hanging out with a dozen Israeli anarchists from three different groups ‒ seeing them protest in the streets, watching them get arrested and tear-gassed, and talking to them on city benches late into the night over cheap cigarettes and cold bottles of Budvar. Some of them were hostile, deriding me as part of “the establishment but many were generous and open, patiently explaining their philosophy, answering my many questions, and even offering me their beds if I needed somewhere to sleep. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Many who subscribe to the anarchist creed do so because they want to live a kind of communal, utopian existence, where they’re in charge of their own affairs. Authority and centralized government, they think, are inherently coercive. Human beings, on the other hand, are inherently good and will naturally form their own social order in a peaceful and productive way ‒ if only given the chance.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">It’s a noble idea, to be sure. Yet the movement is fraught by clumsy public relations and a lack of organization. Even the website for the Institute of Anarchist Studies, an anarchist publishing organization in Oregon, concedes that the movement “has yet to acquire the rigor and complexity needed to comprehend and transform the present.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Israel’s oldest and best-known anarchist group is Anarchists Against the Wall, a loose organization of anti-occupation agitators who demonstrate against the separation barrier in the West Bank. Although the group has no wider anarchist platform, and not all of its members are anarchists, its commitment sets them apart: they’ve been traveling to Palestinian-led protests in West Bank villages almost every Friday for more than a decade.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“The reason we have no manifesto is because it’s not relevant,” an Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall organizer who’s in his forties tells The Jerusalem Report during clashes with the IDF in Ni’lin, a Palestinian village, in late May. “The most relevant thing we can be doing right now is this.” </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Tal is a teenage student who lives with his parents in a nice neighborhood in Haifa. A Mizrahi Jewish anarchist and activist, Tal wears a nose-ring and black clothes. As he puts it: “I look like a freak.” The combination of his dress style and brown skin make Tal the subject of frequent searches by the police in Haifa. “It happens about once a week,” he says.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The police sometimes make him pull open his underwear so they can look inside to see if he’s hiding drugs. These repeated violations of his privacy by Israeli police officers are part of why Tal is a believer in anarchism, which eschews authoritarian figures such as cops, and aims to create a radically egalitarian society. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The anarchist movement in Israel is very small, even for an already small country. Past estimates have put their total number at 300 or so, but I’d estimate the number to be significantly higher based on the fact that I saw at least 100 people turn out for a Unity rally in Haifa on a recent afternoon. Still, the anarchist movement has not caught on in Israel the way it has in other parts of the world.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Part of the reason is because the state has such a monopoly over the means of violence, and is so well-equipped to handle popular unrest, says Yossi Shain, a political philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University. “These types of anarchist groups [like Unity] are incredibly marginal,” he tells The Report, explaining that the military strength of the government naturally inhibits such behavior.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Anarchism may also be unattractive to Israelis because to dissolve the country’s borders, which are considered vital for national security and are often seen as a bulwark against Islamic extremism, may seem a rather daunting task to the average layman.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">An Israeli restaurant worker and activist named Anne who self-identifies as an anarchist says it could be “totally paralyzing” to consider how difficult that task was. “But the point isn’t to win, it’s about doing the right thing, and that’s why we do it,” says Anne, who is in her early thirties and lives in Jerusalem. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Lena Pasinkova, a Russian-Israeli journalist who’s also a member of Unity, agrees. The 26-year-old anarchist says it’s very difficult to get the two sides to cooperate in Israel-Palestine. “I don’t know how I can make people more in solidarity with each other,” Pasinkova tells The Report on a break from her job washing dishes in a sweltering kitchen in Haifa’s German Colony. “I feel that all I can do in Israel [as an anarchist activist] is worry that the government is on a road to fascism.” </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Agree with her or not, it’s hard not to admire Pasinkova’s dedication to the cause. She fled Russia for Israel in 2014 after a stunt she pulled in St. Petersburg landed her on the wrong side of the law. Pasinkova and a small group of fellow activists had built a large fire in the street and publicly called for Russia to end its military involvement in Ukraine.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“The point was to say to Russia, ‘If you don’t stop intervention in Ukraine, Maidan [Nezalezhnosti, the central square of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine] will use this bridge to come to you, that social revolution will come to Russia,’” she explains. “It was kind of a joke, but a serious joke. We wanted to say that as long as you kill other people, you’ll also get killed. Russia kills people in Syria, and so they are killed by Syrians. They intervene in Ukraine, and they also die there.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Pasinkova says she was facing up to three years in prison for vandalism ‒ a fellow activist, Pyotr Pavlensky, is currently serving a 16-month stint behind bars for his role in the same demonstration.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">So, when her lawyers advised her to flee Russia, she did, leaving her family and friends behind to move to Israel in 2014. She joined Unity shortly afterwards, and made Aliyah soon thereafter, when her Russian foreign passport was going to expire. In addition to her job as a dishwasher and her organizing activities with Unity, Pasinkova is a writer and editor for Political Critiques, an online magazine based in Poland, Ukraine and Russia.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The anarchist struggle in Israel-Palestine has her pretty worn out these days, she admits. But she doesn’t intend to stick around long ‒ she plans to go to Turkish Kurdistan soon, to study anarchism and “join the revolution.” </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Here, in Israel, there are several ways anarchists grapple with the state. The first is the mandatory draft. When Jewish Israelis turn 18, they’re compelled to serve three years in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), or two years for women. Though there are plenty of Israeli anarchists who aren’t pacifists, serving in the IDF is anathema to their cause.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">As a result, some find loopholes that allow them to avoid conscription, such as feigning or exaggerating psychological issues. Others, like Edo, an unemployed activist from northern Israel, refuse to be labeled “mentally unfit,” and spend time in prison for refusing to serve. Edo, 19, tells The Report he spent 90 days in Israeli prisons last year for rejecting IDF orders to enlist.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b><b>‘The Past Holds Us All In a Net’</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Trying to create a practical framework for their philosophy is something that has given pains to Jewish anarchists for more than a century, from American civil rights campaigner Emma Goldman (1869-1940) to the German political philosopher Gustav Landauer (1870-1919). Landauer’s answer to this question was to argue that government could not be violently overthrown, but only gradually dissolved over time by people making it superfluous, which could be accomplished if they changed their behavior.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“The State is a condition, a certain relationship among human beings,” he famously said, according to the 1950 book Paths in Utopia by the German Jewish politico-religious scholar, Martin Buber. “We destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another.” In other words, if enough people voluntarily remove themselves from the establishment, the establishment itself would naturally decay, meaning there’d be no need for a violent workers’ revolution. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Goldman, on the other hand, refrained entirely from trying to map out how the anarchist future would look. Doing so, she maintained, could actually be damaging to the anarchist endeavor itself.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“I believe that Anarchism cannot consistently impose an iron-clad program or method on the future,” she wrote in her 1910 book Anarchism and Other Essays, which is often cited by Israeli anarchists explaining their belief system. “The things every new generation has to fight, and which it can least overcome, are the burdens of the past, which holds us all in a net.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Such eloquent prose was a knack of Goldman’s, who is one of history’s most prolific ‒ and most troublesome ‒ anarchists. A Russian-born Jewish immigrant to the US, Goldman became an ardent civil rights advocate soon after arriving to America, even going to prison on several occasions for incendiary speeches she delivered and, once, for speaking in favor of birth control.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Goldman personifies how anarchist agitating can be misunderstood in the present, but sometimes proves important decades, or even centuries, later. In her time, Goldman was considered a traitor and threat to public security ‒ J. Edgar Hoover called her one of “the most dangerous anarchists in the country,” and frankly the assessment wasn’t entirely off the mark. The man who assassinated US President William McKinley cited Goldman as his inspiration, and Goldman helped plan the assassination of a wealthy steel magnate, Henry Clay Frick, whose private security forces had killed a number of striking factory workers in Pittsburgh. The shooting attempt failed, and her accomplice, Alexander Berkman, who was also her sometimes lover, ended up serving a lengthy prison term for the crime.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">But the ideas that Goldman devoted her life to ‒ such as women’s rights, gay rights and workers’ rights ‒ are widely accepted today. Leading civil rights campaigners, such as the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union, have said Goldman inspired them. Goldman’s friend, Harry Weinberger, said at her funeral that she would “live forever in the hearts of [her] friends,” and that “the story of [her] life will live as long as the stories are told of women and men of courage and idealism.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">So far, he’s turned out to be right.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><b><span style="font-size: large;">A Public Relations Problem</span></b><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The anarchist protest in Haifa on May 1, or “May Day,” was held on the anniversary of the Haymarket Riots, which occurred in Chicago in 1886 when laborers protesting for a shorter workday clashed with police. Seven police officers died in the violence, and eight labor activists, were later sentenced to death or long terms in prison for their roles in the killings, although little evidence was presented that linked them to the crimes.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The Haifa march, organized by Unity, is intended to commemorate and continue the workers’ struggles in Chicago in those years. An announcement posted on Unity’s website declares that the point of the march is to advocate for a six-hour workday, yet the significance of the demonstration is largely lost on bystanders.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">As the group of anarchists marches through downtown Haifa banging drums and cowbells and holding aloft banners bearing slogans such as “From the river to the sea, freedom for everyone” and “No Gods, no masters, no nations, no borders,” passersby appear confused. Others are outright hostile, shouting curses at the group from passing cars. One man hangs out the window of a passing truck and shoves two fingers rapidly back and forth through a hole he’d made with his other hand.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Edo, the 19-year- old refusenik, says this kind of thing is inevitable. “It happens at every leftist protest,” he acknowledges but worries that the negative image given off by the march could alienate people from the cause. “For an outsider who doesn’t know what we’re talking about, it just looks like a bunch of punks with black flags shouting stuff.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">In a country where the left-wing is often called treasonous, people have a special loathing for anarchists, who occupy a position on the political spectrum to the left of most leftists. Comments like “I’d love to see the police bust open their heads” and “These terrorist Arab lovers should be expelled from the country” are typical in Israeli news stories about anarchist protests and other anarchist activities. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">To be fair, anarchists have caused some mayhem in Israel over the years, which explains some of the vitriol. In recent years, they’ve changed the names of streets in Tel Aviv; torched settlers’ fields in the West Bank, and thrown tear gas canisters at the US ambassador’s house in Herzliya.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">This sort of civil disobedience (and outright criminal activity) is known as “illegalism.” Apparently embraced by a sizeable minority of anarchists in Israel, its purpose is to provoke or attack state institutions in order to trigger a response and to inspire others. When asked why protesters at the May Day rally were blocking traffic, a stunt that resulted in the arrests of two of the demonstrators, one anarchist told me, “It was just for fun. We don’t like to walk in a straight line as the police tell us to.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">A smaller minority of Israeli anarchists support outright violence as a means to their political ends. A 25-year- old restaurant manager I meet in Haifa, who openly identifies as an anarchist, says in all seriousness that he “loves” violence. “The state uses violence against us every day,” he says, giving taxes as a somewhat dubious example. “If I don’t pay my taxes, the authorities will arrest me and force me to go to prison,” he says. Therefore, regular people have the right to resist the coercive government.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">But his views are not typical of most Israeli anarchists ‒ most take a more nuanced view of the need for violence. Unity, for example, which has about 30 members, says it eschews violence under all conditions except one: self-defense.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Levin, the swarthy Ukrainian-Israeli who co-founded Unity in 2010, tells me that, when the revolution comes, he believes “bosses, politicians and rich folks” will “try to fight and destroy the revolutionary masses.” Therefore, it’s justified for the people to defend themselves, says Levin, 29, who was an IDF officer during the Second Lebanon War and adds that he had right-wing political views that were “close to fascist” before he became an anarchist seven years ago. He says his change of heart occurred after witnessing “the injustice that Zionists do to Palestinians” in the West Bank and Gaza. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">But anarchism is mostly a peaceful ideology—or at least that’s what the anarchists say. "It's not human nature to fight,” said a socialist writer in his middle ages who I met at the Unity protest in May.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“Sure, there is some arguing that happens between people who live together,” he said. “But when millions of people go and kill millions of other people—that can only happen when there are big institutions organizing it.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-4613828819632533102016-01-08T04:03:00.002-08:002016-11-07T08:55:01.610-08:00Treasure House Of Jewish CultureAs Jerusalem's National Library prepares to move to new premises, it deals with shifting definitions of Jewishness<br /><br /><i>(scroll down for plain text)</i><br /><br />By Hunter Stuart<br /><br /><i>Published in the January 25, 2016 issue of&nbsp;The Jerusalem Report magazine</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DaLeQD9fJF4/Vo-k8TFheoI/AAAAAAAABZk/yzI5DmHm_YQ/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.01.22%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DaLeQD9fJF4/Vo-k8TFheoI/AAAAAAAABZk/yzI5DmHm_YQ/s640/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.01.22%2BPM.png" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kvwfpWspfpk/Vo-lFNYvKhI/AAAAAAAABZs/ctzeaDUqzi8/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.02.06%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kvwfpWspfpk/Vo-lFNYvKhI/AAAAAAAABZs/ctzeaDUqzi8/s640/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.02.06%2BPM.png" width="478" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gVCYet_l3Dk/Vo-lNcbhRWI/AAAAAAAABZ0/GzGPuHE4zJg/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.02.33%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gVCYet_l3Dk/Vo-lNcbhRWI/AAAAAAAABZ0/GzGPuHE4zJg/s640/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.02.33%2BPM.png" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dHi573PKpQ4/Vo-lTDiDYnI/AAAAAAAABZ8/O5edSf6tnak/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.03.04%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dHi573PKpQ4/Vo-lTDiDYnI/AAAAAAAABZ8/O5edSf6tnak/s640/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.03.04%2BPM.png" width="478" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MagXL0Mq4Do/Vo-lZFa8w6I/AAAAAAAABaE/cfrs-WWs5Ho/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.03.25%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MagXL0Mq4Do/Vo-lZFa8w6I/AAAAAAAABaE/cfrs-WWs5Ho/s640/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.03.25%2BPM.png" width="478" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JNEJ9cnfUbg/Vo-le14rJXI/AAAAAAAABaM/sm4osoRvxa4/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.03.52%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JNEJ9cnfUbg/Vo-le14rJXI/AAAAAAAABaM/sm4osoRvxa4/s640/Screen%2Bshot%2B2016-01-08%2Bat%2B2.03.52%2BPM.png" width="478" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Treasure House of Jewish Culture: Israel's National Library deals with shifting definitions of Jewishness&nbsp;</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>By Hunter Stuart</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">When the Jewish National Library was first built in Jerusalem in 1892, its founder proclaimed that it should “be a great house, high and lofty, in which shall be treasured the fruits of the Jewish People’s endeavor.”&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">For the next hundred years, those words ‒ spoken by Dr. Joseph Chazanovitch, whose personal book collection became the foundation of the library’s collection ‒ were taken literally. The National Library went to work,obsessively collecting everything ever published by or about Jews and Judaism ‒ from any time period, any language and any country in the world.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It was a gargantuan, almost impossible, task, but the library largely succeeded. Today, the wide, squat building in west Jerusalem houses the largest collection of Judaica on the planet. It has close to 85,000 Hebrew manuscripts ‒ either in original form or on microfilm ‒ squirreled away inside its stone walls. The library claims these are more than 90 percent of all the Hebrew manuscripts in existence.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But today, with the rise of the Internet, there’s an unprecedented amount of information being published about Judaism. There’s said to be three times as much information about the Jewish people online than there is in every Judaism-related book that’s ever been published. As a result, it’s impossible for the National Library (which changed its name from “The Jewish National Library” to “The National Library Of Israel” in 2008) to continue to comprehensively collect everything published by or about the Jewish people as it once did ‒ especially with limited space and limited resources: The library’s Judaica collection has an annual budget of NIS1.3 million ($335,000)and only six employees (not all of whom work full-time).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To solve this problem, the library has limited its scope by redefining what’s considered Jewish.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">“We are narrowing the genetic factor of the Jewishness that’s required for us to be interested in collecting things,” says Aviad Stollman, the National Library’s Head Of Collections, on a recent morning in his office on the Hebrew University’s campus at Givat Ram, where the library is located. “Now that the Jewish population has grown and there’s been so much assimilation, we have to be more selective,” he tells The Jerusalem Report.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">What that means is that the Library has begun to ignore works by Jewish authors, artists and academics if the work -- or its creator -- aren’t Jewish enough. For example, novelists like Jonathan Safran Foer or Lev Grossman don’t necessarily make the cut just because they have a lineage going, says Stollman, 41, a Jerusalem-born academic who first stumbled on the National Library in his twenties while writing his dissertation. “There needs to be something distinctly Jewish about the person or about their work."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The new rule for what type of Judaica to collect is now enshrined in the library’s "Collection Policy" which provides guidelines on where resources should be devoted. “Since the boundaries of Jewish identity have become blurred,” reads the 100-page tome, “it is sometimes difficult to determine who is a Jew (especially in the last century).”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To solve this problem, the policy advises the library’s “selectors” ‒ those in charge of obtaining Judaica from around the world ‒ to assume a more restrictive approach to collection, “especially when the content of the materials in question does not pertain to topics of a clearly Jewish nature,” it states.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Stollman acknowledges this may not be the most politically correct stance to take. “People are very touchy about this sort of thing,” he says. “But the fact is that the Jewish world is changing demographically. There’s has been a lot assimilation. I’m not saying this in a negative way ‒ it’s just a fact. And it wouldn’t be wise for us to continue to try to collect everything from someone just because he or she has a Jewish grandmother.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This doesn’t mean the library ignores work by secular Jewish writers and philosophers. It’s still interested in archiving a novel like Franz Kafka’s &amp;quot;The Trial&amp;quot;, for example, even though Judaism isn’t mentioned once in the whole book. That’s because the plot “is about a guy where, everyone wants something from him, but he doesn’t know what it is. How Jewish is that?” Stollman exclaims. (The German-speaking, Prague-born Kafka also studied Hebrew and the Talmud, which helped give him a boost.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The National Library has shifted to this more restrained approach gradually over the course of decades, but officially put the rule into writing for the first time two or three years ago, says Stollman, who was the library’s lead Judaica curator until he was promoted to head of collections last year.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Though he speaks with an American accent, Stollman is Israeli through-and- through. His mother’s family has been in the country for 200 years. (His father immigrated to Israel from Detroit at age 30.) Stollman was born and raised in Jerusalem, and in his teens and early 20’s, he was a paratrooper in the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and later, a member of an elite IAF anti-aircraft unit.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">“Up until last year, I was still getting called up for reserve duty every year,” he says. “It’s hard to be away from your wife and kids for weeks or months at a time.” Between stints serving his country, Stollman got his PhD in the Babylonian Talmud at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, and then embarked on a decade-long teaching career that included spells teaching Jewish studies at Bar Ilan University, or teaching the Talmud at Pardes Institute in southern Jerusalem -- and even (briefly) teaching a course on the 12th century philosopher and doctor Maimonides in Austin at the University of Texas. Today, the Stollman family lives in Efrat, an educated, well-to- do West Bank settlement that’s 20 minutes by car from downtown Jerusalem.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Talking to The Jerusalem Report, Stollman seems slightly nervous that the article will make the library sound overly parochial. “We’re a lot more inclusive than just collecting Judaica,” he stresses, noting that the institution has three other collections: the Middle East And Islam Collection, the Humanities Collection, and the Israel Collection, which focus on preserving the texts of other cultural, linguistic and religious groups both in Israel and the rest of the world.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">During the course of multiple interviews, Stollman repeatedly emphasizes that the National Library is expanding its definition of what’s Jewish -- not restricting it. He says these days, the library may be less preoccupied with preserving the intellectual output of the great Jewish thinkers of history, but it’s more focused on giving a “snapshot” of ordinary Judaism in 2015. To do that, the library has begun collecting truckloads of “ephemera” in recent years – things that were designed to be thrown away. This might include an ad for a kosher supermarket in a suburb of Paris, or a menu from a restaurant in a small Jewish community in Argentina.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">These small scraps of Jewish life are just as important to the National Library as Pulitzer prize-winning novels, if not more so, because they’re more unique, Stollman says. These seemingly-trivial tidbits from Jewish communities worldwide include things like bar mitzvah invitations, self-help books, flyers, school notebooks, store catalogs, greeting cards, cookbooks, marriage contracts and divorce decrees.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Sometimes, what the library chooses to acquire and what it chooses to ignore can seem paradoxical. Recently, there was a situation where someone wanted to donate the personal archives of a prominent historical Jewish German chemist, and the library turned him down, according to Yoel Finkelman, the library’s lead Judaica curator. “There wasn’t anything particularly Jewish about the collection,” Finkelman said recently outside a restricted-access laboratory in the library’s basement where rare books get repaired. “And it’s a lot of work for us to catalogue and store an archive of books.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Finkelman, 43, a tall, sweet, serious man who was a part-time Talmud teacher before becoming the National Library’s Judaica Curator last year, says it’s not his job to determine what’s authentically Jewish and what isn’t. “If Jews are doing something and they think what they’re doing is Jewish, then, as far as I’m concerned, that’s Judaism,” he says.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Alongside these throwaway items known as “ephemera,” of course, the library also houses a treasure trove of monumentally important Jewish artifacts. Among them are a 13 th century prayer book from Germany that is thought to be the earliest known textual evidence of Yiddish, and a handwritten commentary on the Mishna by Maimonides.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">These “jewels,” as Finkelman calls them, are mere threads in the tapestry of Jewish life that the</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">National Library is weaving. According to its official literature, the library’s job is to be a “national</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">memory” for the Jewish people and ‒ as with many things about being Jewish ‒ there are unique</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">challenges that come with the part. Jews have one of the longest historical memories of any human culture, the library’s website points out, and the many countriesin which Jews have lived around the world make the job of documenting them extremely difficult.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">“It can be daunting, absolutely,” admits Finkelman. “There&amp;#39;s a way in which the tension between centralization and diaspora Judaism is particularly fraught.” But it’s also exciting to be engaged in such important work. “There’s something very unique about the way in which Jewish culture contains a multitude of languages and a multitude of different prints [handwriting],” Finkelman says while flipping through a 14th century Spanish Mahzor, or high holiday prayer book, appearing to savor the crackling sound made by the old parchment pages.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Few things excite Finkelman more than getting to touch sacred Jewish books, and his thumb bears a bandage from having flipped through so many of them. “These texts are just so rich and unexpected and powerful and surprising and compelling and subversive,” he croons in one of the library’s climate-controlled rooms, which are designed especially for viewing rare books. “It’s a privilege to be able to come into contact with them.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Ever since he was a college student at Yeshiva University in New York, Finkelman was in love with the written word and fascinated by ancient Jewish traditions. He wanted to become a teacher so that he could awaken others to that same excitement. After moving to Israel at age 21, Finkelman got his PhD at Hebrew University, got married and started teaching the Talmud and Jewish philosophy, first at a yeshiva in Jerusalem and later at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">In early 2014, a friend encouraged him to apply for the Judaica Curator position with The National Library, and he leapt at the chance. “I really do have the coolest job in the world,” he says.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But it’s also a difficult job, partly because the library must collect Judaica in dozens of different languages. Not only is there great linguistic variety among the different Jewish communities that exist around the world, there’s also a lot of information about Judaism that’s written by non-Jews. For example, the library has an arrangement with a supplier in China to get everything published in Chinese that relates to Judaism. Why? “The way people in Beijing perceive Jews in 2015 might be important to scholars a century from now,” Finkelman says.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">You just don’t know what might be important. When deciding what to collect, Finkelman and the Library’s other curators constantly consider what people may want to know about Jewish culture 100, 500 or 1,000 years from now. “If we preserve a Marathi-language book about Jewish history, and only one person reads it 100 years from now, I’ll be happy,” Finkelman says.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But do the National Library’s new guidelines of what’s Jewish – and what’s not – make sense? If it ignores works by Jewish writers who weren’t religious – like Saul Bellow or Philip Roth, for example – doesn’t that mean it will miss out on a whole world of great literature?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Hillel Kieval, the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Jewish History and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis, acknowledges it’s a problematic question, particularly because formal Jewish denominational affiliations have declined in the past fifty years or so -- especially in the U.S. -- and also because there’s been a lot of intermarrying between Jews and non-Jews. “This makes it difficult for Jewish historians to decide who to study,” Kievel told The Jerusalem Report in a phone call in November. “For example, Jews who convert to other religions, or Jews who abandon some kind of formal Jewish affiliation, are they still considered Jews?”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Kievel believes it’s still important for Jewish historians and collectors to study assimilated Jews because they’re still “an integral part of the modern Jewish experience.” But he says that since the National Library – like libraries everywhere – has limited resources, a compromise is necessary. “And the National Library’s new approach is very intriguing, because it allows for the fluidity of Jewish identities, without imposing any particular set of definitions of what Judaism is,” he says. “But at the same time, it wants the focus to be on Jewish identity. And that sounds very reasonable to me.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The point of this obsessive collecting of Jewish culture is not just to preserve it for scholars and academics, but for everyone. Every map, every photo, every magazine that’s collected is just one word in the Jewish national epic.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">“If the Jewish people don’t preserve their own heritage, who can be expected to preserve it for them?” David J. Gilner, the director of libraries at Hebrew Union College’s Jewish Institute Of Religion in Cincinnati, told The Jerusalem Report by phone recently. Hebrew Union College claims to have the second-largest collection of Judaica in the world after Israel's National Library.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Just as big a task as gathering Judaica is preserving it and making it accessible. It’s not enough to just stick it on the shelf ‒ everything must be digitized and uploaded to the Internet. The National Library is currently scanning tens of thousands of pages of books, hundreds of thousands of archival documents and millions of pages of newspapers; afterwards, the scanned images will be uploaded to several online databases and made word-searchable, which is itself a massive undertaking since faded ink and different styles of script aren’t always understood by today’s character-recognition technology. If the library can pull it off, it will be a historian’s dream. Imagine needing to find every mention of Ze’ev Jabotinsky in Polish Yiddish newspapers between 1918-1939, and being able to do it with a couple of keystrokes.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And that’s the National Library’s final goal ‒ to get the general public to enjoy the vast resources it offers. Today, the library is not an inviting place: It’s fortress-like in appearance, its stone façade broken only by a thin strip of windows on one floor. It is an inward-facing institution, mostly catering to researchers, writers, and other intellectual types. It sits in a gated community; visitors must present ID and pass through a security station to enter the university campus where the library is located. Even among Israelis, the institution – which so painstakingly records and preserves their history – is not necessarily well-known. “Basically, we’re sitting on a treasure-trove here, and only a few thousand people have been exposed to it,” says Stollman. “And we want to have millions.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To do that, in 2019,the National Library will moveto a new, state-of- the-art building near the Knesset and the Israel Museum,which it says will be much more open and accessible. The new facility is being funded by the Rothschild family’s philanthropic foundation Yad Hanadiv as well as The Gottesman Fund, a U.S.-based investor foundation that says it’s focused on “improv[ing] Israelis’ quality of life.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The five-year project is expected to cost at least $200 million, money well spent if it can provide the great house to treasure the fruits of the Jewish People’s endeavor envisioned bythe library’s founder.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-73479741169997124422015-01-10T16:33:00.001-08:002015-01-10T16:33:45.478-08:00My Columns<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hunter-stuart/a-message-from-a-man-to-men_b_5715733.html">A Message From A Man To Men About Wedding Planning</a><br /><br /><br /><br />Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2212303193112508508.post-55924216156342467942015-01-10T16:24:00.001-08:002015-01-31T10:07:02.438-08:00My Funny Video Work<h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; direction: ltr; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1>Hunter Stuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08884779903814649617noreply@blogger.com